


Harry is Woman Hear Her Roar

by skivingsnaccbox



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black Chronicles - murkybluematter, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Angry Harry, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles, Rigel Black Series, essentially a makeover montage, murkybluematter, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28440564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skivingsnaccbox/pseuds/skivingsnaccbox
Summary: The ruse is up, Rigel is "on the run", and Harry desperately needs a new, very different public image. Archie has a lot of ideas and fashion advice, and Harry has a lot of emotions to processFanfic of murkybluematter's Rigel Black Chronicles & an (extremely loose) fanfic of Tsume_Yuki's the Detersive Divulge (up to Chapter 4). Fanfic of a fanfic of a fanfic of fic
Comments: 119
Kudos: 314
Collections: Rigel Black Chronicles Appreciation, Rigel Black Universe





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not intended to build plot in any way, so there is no Riddle content and minimal mentions of anything that wasn't directly related to the purpose of this story. But assume that Harry is hanging out with Leo and Caelum and dealing with Riddle drama and all that jazz. I just don't go into it here. 
> 
> If you haven't read murkybluematter's Rigel Black Chronicles, you will not understand this at all. You don't necessarily have to read Tsume_Yuki's the Detersive Divulge to understand this fic, but it's excellent and you should. What you do need to know is....
> 
> SPOILER for the Detersive Divulge:
> 
> Rigel is revealed to be a halfblood, but nobody realizes Harry was Rigel. Due to Rigel's success and the reveal of the ruse, Dumbledore and the Light Party get a political boost in the Wizengamot and push through a change to the Hogwarts admissions regulations. Halfbloods can attend Hogwarts, and Harry is selected to go. 
> 
> Thanks to the aforementioned writers for the excellent content. Enjoy!

"Archie, this is a disaster," Harry exclaimed. "I spent four years acting like myself while pretending to be someone else. Now, I have to be myself while acting like someone different so that all the people who know what I'm like as someone else think I'm who I actually am, but that who I am is different from who they knew."

Archie's lips twitched. "I know this isn't funny, but I don't know how we ended up in a situation where absolutely nothing makes sense and yet is completely logical." He paused. "Have you ever considered giving up potions and going into theater? You're the most practiced actress in the wizarding world."

Harry glared at him, although she couldn't quite hold it. He was right. It was comically absurd. She groaned and muttered, "This is a farce. A dangerous one, but a farce."

"Don't worry," Archie said, clasping her shoulder. "People see what they want to see. And everyone will be looking at you, it's true, both because of your role in the ruse and because you are a halfblood at Hogwarts. So we just have to give them something so completely different to Rigel and what they expect that they don't see the similarities underneath."

Harry's eyes narrowed. There was a gleam in his eye she didn't like. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

"I've been thinking about it all night, and there are some major similarities that it will be impossible to hide—primarily how powerful you are and your passion for potions. So then I considered all the other similarities and brainstormed the exact opposites." His lips pulled together like he was holding in a laugh. "First, they knew Rigel, they knew you, as a boy. So you have to be a girl."

"I am a girl," Harry pointed out. She added dryly, "And apparently a very pretty one. My entirely new face will help."

"Yes, but you are what the gender normative would call a tomboy," he said, wrinkling his nose at the gender binary. "And you have spent years practicing the gestures and behaviors of a boy. So you are going to have to be girly."

"Girly," Harry repeated, raising one of her now elegantly arched eyebrows.

"Yup. You have an incredible memory. We will get every back issue of Witch Weekly for the past four years, and you will study them. You are going to learn the words to every single popular song. And every week, you are going to sit in the middle of the hall at breakfast and read Witch Weekly, and smile and look like you are enjoying it."

"You have to be kidding."

Archie continued like she hadn't even spoken. "They've all seen you make potions. Both Snape and your friends would recognize your hands and saying you grew up with Rigel no longer works. You will have to change how you chop things and practice it so much that it looks natural. You can deal with that yourself. But we need more, so I recommend brightly colored nail polish to distract them and lots of jewelry-- green to draw attention to your eyes. Rigel had black hair. Your hair is longer now, but the color is still a similarity, so we change it."

"To what?" Harry asked. "I would look terrible as a blond or a redhead."

Archie grinned again. "That's the other thing. Rigel is known to hate attention, to have actively avoided it at all costs. This means you have to do the opposite—you have to intentionally draw attention to yourself. In the exact opposite way." He grinned at the look on her face and pulled out the hair potion she had invented long ago with a thoroughly Sirius flourish. "We're going to die your hair a bright color. Purple or blue, probably. Something that won't clash too badly with your eyes."

Harry shuddered. "Archie, nobody does that! Colored hair is a muggle thing. They will always be staring. I'll stand out in every crowd."

"That's why it's so good, don't you see?" Archie insisted, a lopsided grin stretching across his face. "You have to do muggle things. You have to force the halfblood in their faces. Rigel was a pureblood in their memory, and he-- you-- carefully maintained that. You have to seem so halfblood that they are uncomfortable and flinch away. They'll be so grossed out they won't even look at you."

"Of course they'll look at me! I'll have purple hair!"

"They'll look, and then they'll look away instinctually."

Harry shook her head slowly, hating the part of her that recognized that it might actually work. Every single detail was worse than the previous one. She was particularly repulsed by the idea of having bracelets jingling while she chopped and stirred. It would be so distracting.

Archie observed the consternation on her face and said, "Harry, you can't completely hide your personality. You have to make sure what they see is so different that they don't notice it when you slip up. They can't just know in their heads that you are a girl and a halfblood. You have to wave it in their faces so that it distracts from everything else. Maybe try writing your notes with muggle pens instead of quills," he added, his brow furrowed. He whipped out a pen and started taking notes, which Harry mentally reminded herself to burn the second he was finished. Notes would be their downfall if he wasn't careful.

"Not all girls like Witch Weekly," Harry muttered, her chin raised mulishly.

"But there is nothing wrong with those who do, and anyone who looks down on them is sexist and demeaning," Archie responded pointedly. "There's no reason why you can't be a potions genius and enjoy celebrity gossip at the same time."

Harry had never been particularly interested in gender discrimination outside of the potions community. She was going to have to learn for her new identity, apparently, and she started rapidly reviewing her schedule in her head. She did not have time to subvert the patriarchy.

"And I meant what I said about drawing attention," Archie repeated. "Not the whole time you are at Hogwarts, but when you show up, you should make a few really noticeable scenes."

"What, be rude? Set off fireworks?" Harry asked doubtfully. "I don't want everyone to absolutely hate me."

"Oh no, you should still be kind and smile and be friendly. You're representing halfbloods and don't want to turn everyone against you. But Rigel—that you—was so filled with guilt that you hid away. Draco remembers you as ridden with inexplicable shame. So you have to be incredibly unashamed."

"I _am_ ashamed," Harry muttered. She saw Archie's eyebrows shoot up at the rare burst of unnecessary honesty, and her gaze jumped to the wall. Archie knew more about her than anybody, but it was hard to verbalize her feelings even with him. "I lied to everybody."

"Because you had to," Archie insisted. After a concerned glance, he continued, "Some pureblood supremacist will eventually insult you or hex you. When they do, you have to show them up. Defeat them with some really flashy magic, something embarrassing and noticeable, and then shout at all of them about their blood prejudice. Show them some of the famous Lily Potter temper that you've been suppressing."

"I don't have a bad temper!"

"Yeah you do," Archie scoffed. "Your vengeance was terrifying when we were kids. You've just repressed all your anger and every other strong emotion." He looked at her sidelong. "Which at some point you need to deal with. If I didn't think it would endanger you, I would drag you to a mind healer myself to talk through what happened."

"I don't need anybody messing around with my mind," Harry said, glaring at him. Her mind had enough going on in it, and after the last task, she had her fill of both sentient rocks and any other mind magic.

Archie waved a hand. "That's not what mind healers do. But it's beside the point. At Hogwarts, let loose. Be loud. Rigel was quiet. And then you can apologize for overreacting, look rueful, be nice again, the whole thing. But flex your power. Flex the benefits of being a halfblood. And show off."

"That's going to be exhausting," Harry muttered, groaning.

"Yes, but you only have to do it once or twice. Just in a very public way."

She nodded slowly. "Make a few big scenes in public and be angry, but when I'm not acting angry, smile a ton. Make them see me as someone else. Someone confident and happy and liberated and feminine." Harry frowned. "I was planning on the opposite, you know. Getting sorted into Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff where they don't know me, and never leaving the common room or the Room of Requirement except for meals and class."

Archie snorted. "Well, you should still do that. Shove all your differences in the faces of the people who know you, and then hide away whenever possible to ensure that they don't see anything that contradicts what they expect. They're used to seeing Rigel study, so you can't study in the library where your friends—" he paused, looking at her pityingly in a way that made her want to kick him, and then continued, "might see you and recognize your posture or your habits. Act it up in class, and then hide."

Harry nodded, her nose crinkling as she imagined all of it. "But people have met me as Harriett before. They know I'm not like that. And I don't want to have to be like that for the rest of my life."

"Easily explained. You'll say that all three of us were melding both our appearances and personalities for the sake of the disguise, and now you finally get to be yourself. Tell everyone you're experimenting. It'll make sense to them. And then, when you've made it through Hogwarts, you can just grow up and grow out of it. Just claim it was a phase. At that point, Rigel will be just a memory to most people."

"Okay," Harry said, resting her head in her palms. "I can do it. I can do that."

She glanced up. Archie was looking at her boots with pursed lips, and Harry's stomach dropped. "I need my boots," she protested, the words tumbling out in haste. "I'll get brown ones instead of black."

"Nope," Archie said, popping the p. "That's one of the big problems. Your mannerisms are too instinctual. You won't help them reappearing when you forget. They know how Rigel walks. So you are going to have to wear boots that completely change your stride."

"The uniform regulations are strict," Harry pointed out. "I can't just wear whatever I want."

"No, but we are going to get fashionable boots with a slight heel," Archie explained as her eyes widened in horror. He continued, "Just two or three inches, so they stay within the regulations, but enough to slightly change your step." He patted her comfortingly. "You can change your shoes for potions."

"How am I supposed to fight in heels?" Harry exclaimed, exasperated. Attacking her potions boots was going too far. They hadn't done anything wrong, and they didn't deserve to be insulted. "You know me. Something always goes wrong around me."

Archie nodded. "That _is_ a problem. I suppose you'll just have to spend the rest of the summer training until you can fight both in and out of them." He nodded. "We'll practice you fighting in low heels, and we'll practice you sitting and moving and waving your hands until it's all just mildly different than Rigel."

"Heels," Harry murmured, looking up at the ceiling as if hoping for a lightning bolt to burst through and strike her down. She flopped back on her bed. "Dad is going to have a heart attack."

* * *

Harry spotted Rispah immediately when she entered the Dancing Phoenix, holding court in the corner with a few other women. Leo was sitting at his usual spot at the center table's head, deep in conversation with Marek. Leo looked up the minute the door opened with the narrow eyes of someone always slightly on edge. His face relaxed into a grin when he saw her, which quickly morphed into a frown when she veered towards Rispah instead of him. She shrugged at him, waving him away, and Leo settled down again with a suspicious expression.

"Harry!" Rispah exclaimed, smiling at her flirtatiously. "Keeping Leo on his toes, are you? Going to run away with me instead?"

"Say the word, and I'll be waiting at your door with a portkey in hand," Harry promised, doing her best smolder. "

No, stop that," Rispah said, eyeing Harry critically. "I taught you too many masculine expressions, and they don't work on your new lovely face. It's so dainty."

"That's actually why I'm here," Harry murmured, looking at the grains of the table uncomfortably. "I need you to teach me how to look like a…woman."

"Oh, trust me," Rispah said, a thread of amusement running through her voice, "You already do."

"Yes, and it's getting me all sorts of attention I don't need," Harry complained, frowning. "But if this is the face I have, then I want to be able to use it. I want to weaponize it like you do."

"Are you trying to seduce somebody? Leo would never forgive me if I helped you right into another's arms."

"It's not Leo's business who I seduce," Harry said sharply, carefully not looking in his direction. "And it's not that I want to seduce anyone in particular. I just want to be able to if I need to. And be able to, you know, flirt. Or, more importantly, get people to tell me things or do what I want." Harry glanced up at Rispah and winced slightly as she saw the grin that slowly stretched across the beautiful older woman's face.

Rispah murmured, "I'm going to have the world eating out of your hand." She clapped her hands together and grabbed Harry’s chin, twisting her face from side to side to examine Harry more closely. "Yes, look at those wide green eyes," Rispah said analytically. "I have so much to work with here." She paused, pinning Harry under a suddenly severe gaze. "This will take effort, and I expect you to treat it with the same attention you've treated your free-dueling lessons. I am a master at what I do—and it's not just entertainment and organization, as I can tell you've guessed. My girls and I keep Leo very well-informed with a few well-placed glances. You will need to learn how to move your body, what faces to make, how to attract with your voice and words alone, how to apply makeup and do your hair, and more." Rispah slapped her hands flat on the table. "Twice a week from now until school, I expect to see you for your lessons."

“What lessons?" Leo asked, plopping down on the table and taking a swig of his ale.

Harry sent Rispah a pleading look. Rispah just laughed at her. "Our little Harry wants to learn the art of seduction."

Leo spat out his ale.

* * *

"This is it," Archie said, flopping back on his bed. They had decided to spend the night at Grimmauld Place to practice Harry's new persona one last time. "Last night home. And first night, I guess, as ourselves."

"You get to be yourself," Harry muttered. "I'm going to be a parody of me."

Archie grinned. "This is truly the first time I've ever wished I was going to Hogwarts. What I would give to see you in all of your womanity."

"Womanity is not a word."

"They're going to add it to the dictionary after your reign of sensual femininity takes the world by storm."

Harry stuck her tongue out at him, lying down next to him and staring at the ceiling. She whispered, "I don't know if I can do it. Just watch my friends like that from afar. Be all alone and so close to them."

Archie reached out and clasped her hand. She squeezed it. He responded, "I know."

They laid there in silence for a few minutes. Harry started to drift off, still as able to fall asleep in her clothes as ever. Archie cut into her doze abruptly, exclaiming, "Harry, your friends kind of sucked!"

She rolled over to face him, frowning. She tried to push back the defensiveness that immediately rolled over her. She wasn’t going to snap at the one person she could truly trust in the world, even if his picture of her friends was extremely limited to their worst.

He frowned at the expression on her face. "No, seriously. You've spent so long feeling guilty about lying to them that you've refused to actually acknowledge how their behavior is awful. I'm not saying they aren't funny or enjoyable or loving to those they consider worthy of love," he said. "But that's the problem. They are only kind to those they consider worthy. And you know that. You've been Harry, and you've experienced their disdain."

"They can't help how they were—"

"Yes, they _can_ help it, Harry," Archie exclaimed. "They were fourteen last year. They were old enough to think critically and to question their belief systems. They were old enough to choose to be kind and to have respect for others. But they make that choice. They may have been fun to hang out with, and they may have cared for Rigel. But they're _bigots_."

Harry propped herself up on her elbow, glaring at him. He didn't understand; he couldn't understand them. She ran a hand through her now dark purple, violet tipped hair, tugging at it. "You only know the worst about them. They are good people! I know them!"

"Then look me in the eyes and tell me that you are okay with their beliefs. Tell me that you don't resent them."

Harry held his gaze for a long second, her mouth opening, and then darting away. She remembered the disdain in Draco's eyes when she had met him as Harry. If Harry didn't know him so well, she might have missed it beyond his icy politeness, but she knew Draco Malfoy's every expression. Harry knew his disgust. She thought about Theo, mocking anyone and everyone who wasn't a pureblood. Even Pansy hadn't questioned the politics-- Pansy tolerated Rigel's politics because she prioritized caring for her friend. However, Pansy still did everything in her power to keep Rigel quiet. Pansy disagreed with Harry as much as the rest of them did; she just cared about politics less.

Harry couldn't look at Archie, so she laid back on the bed. Finally, she murmured. "I still love them. I can't help it."

"But you resent them."

"Yes."

Archie's gaze bore into the side of her face. "Let yourself feel the anger you've been bottling up. Let it come to the surface. You've blocked it all off, but it's the anger that will carry you through. I'm not saying you can't love them. But I am saying that it's time to stop giving them free passes and defending their prejudice."

"Anger is exhausting."

"In this case, it's necessary. It's anger that will carry you through this year: anger and the desire to prove yourself to Riddle and to them—to everyone. You can't spend this year moping and gazing at them from afar and romanticizing them. It'll drive you insane." Archie huffed out a breath, sitting up and staring down at her.

She turned her head on the pillow to meet his impossibly warm gray eyes. She barely held his gaze for a moment before closing her eyelids, unable to be vulnerable even to him.

He continued, "You've spent all summer missing them, and that makes sense—it is healthy to grieve. And people do have layers and depths, and they can be wonderful in a million ways that aren't politics. Belief systems and values go deeper than politics, though. You are going back tomorrow, and you need to put away the fondness. They aren't as perfect as you pretend they are." His hands clenched. "It killed me to say nothing when they mistreated you at the ball—at every ball you've been to. They were dicks. Be angry, Harry. Be really fucking angry. Not just on your behalf, but on Addy's behalf, on behalf of everyone impacted by pureblood bigotry." He squeezed her hand. "They deserve your anger, and you deserve better."

Harry jerked out a nod, and he finally settled down. Long after he had drifted to sleep, Harry laid there, sinking deep among her memories. She pushed down the moments of laughter and pulled up the casual slurs and Draco's political rants, and every moment she'd been forced to be quiet about her views. Harry reviewed her memories, thinking of the dislike her friends had barely deigned to disguise when her "Aunt Lily" came up in conversation. They hadn't known Lily was her mother, but they had known she was family. And besides that, Harry thought, Lily is brilliant and kind. Harry's heart cracked, and then she pushed the pieces forcibly back together again. She was angry. It had taken Archie saying it out loud to admit it to herself. The rage had been there all along, trapped next to every other emotion she so carefully held at bay.

 _What are you doing, kid?_ Dom asked, watching her pull memories to the top of her mountain.

Harry stared at him, her face hard. _I'm reminding myself who the enemy is._

* * *

"Are you sure you want to wear that to the Express, honey?" Lily asked, slightly concerned. "It will make a bad impression on the other students, and it's your first day."

Harry looked down at her shimmering dark green muggle dress as she put her suitcase down in the front yard of their mansion and then glanced up at Lily grimly, running her hands through her still distractingly long and now purple hair. "I won't have to change clothes until we are about to arrive," she responded. "And I'm not a pureblood. I refuse to pretend to act like one just to try to make them like me."

"But you don't actually enjoy dresses, and you rarely wear muggle clothes," Lily pointed out, one perfect eyebrow raised.

"That's not the point," Harry said, setting her shoulders and lifting her chin. "The point is that I'm not there to hide or be ashamed." She felt a twinge of guilt at the pride that filled Lily's eyes. One of the reasons Harry was going to Hogwarts was to clear the path for halfbloods like her sister, it was true, but wearing muggle clothes had nothing to do with that. It felt somewhat immoral to sell the new style as a great stance of Light politics and bask under her mother's approving gaze when the purpose was to maintain the lie. Harry shrugged and said, "Nobody there knows that I don't normally wear muggle clothes. And they don't need to know." Harry paused, holding her mother's hand and looking at her more seriously. "I'm proud to be your daughter, Mom. And I don't want anyone to ever think that I would trade you for the privileges of being a pureblood."

Lily's face softened, and she pulled Harry into a hug. In her ear, she whispered, "I love you." Pulling back, Lily looked Harry over one more time. "But darling, I sincerely hope you didn't die your hair purple as a political statement on my behalf. I would truly have never asked that of you. In fact, I would have actively discouraged it."

Harry grinned. "Yeah, but it looks cool. I can't help that I'd make a cooler Muggleborn than you."

Lily's eyes flashed. "I'm cool."

Harry grinned. "I don't know, Mom. You just try to keep up."

Lily rolled her eyes and turned away to holler into the Potter Place for James. The minute her back was turned, Harry looked doubtfully at the dress.

The muggle woman at the store had claimed it was the height of muggle fashion, but Harry really doubted that. But it was undoubtedly flashy, and far shorter and lower cut than Harry had ever worn. When she'd exited the fitting room, Archie had laughed so hard he almost choked on his own spit. And then, when he was done laughing and ignoring her most effective glare, he insisted the dress was the one. And here she was, looking like a muggle disco ball in what the saleswoman had claimed was a day dress. Harry was pretty sure she'd been lying through her teeth.

Harry sighed as her father bounded out of the house and pulled herself together with a perfect fake smile. The other students were never going to know how uncomfortable she was. Harry was going to strut all the way down the train corridor, front to back, using the sashay Rispah had forced her to practice and the occlumency shields Dom had spent so long perfecting. No giggles or goggling eyes would stop her. Rigel Black was dead and buried, and no matter how much she missed being that life, she was never going to be Rigel again.

* * *

Even the carpeting below her feet was familiar. Harry stood for a long moment at the back of the train, listening to the sounds of students shouting and laughing and greeting each other. It was a cacophony of noise on top of the familiar rumble of the train. For a second, déjà vu overwhelmed her. The whole train seemed to shiver in front of her eyes. Harry wanted to run to their usual compartment, slip into her seat next to Pansy, laugh, and hear Theo brag about his romantic exploits.

Harry shoved those feelings aside violently, pasting a look of curiosity over her bruised heart. She sent her magic to levitate her trunk and started to walk down the hallway, each step lengthening her legs and causing her hips to ever so slightly sway. As Harry passed each compartment, her eyes glancing over each interior with a friendly but impersonal gaze, they quieted. Then the sounds of gossip and exclamations of surprise bubbled out behind her. They all knew who she was. They had all seen her face in the Prophet. They had spent all summer badgering each other for news and theories about Rigel Black and his known associates. In her muggle clothes, she made it easier for them to identify her.

She didn't let herself slow as she approached and glanced into her old compartment. Draco, Theo, and Millicent had their heads bent in the corner in deep conversation. Blaise saw her and his mouth ever so slightly dropped open; from him, that brief second of surprise was the equivalent of a shout. But it was Pansy to whom Harry's eyes were drawn. Their eyes met for a second, and Harry gave her a thoroughly un-Rigel-like smile and nod and then turned away and stepped forward. For the slightest second, her confident Harry mask slipped, but it was so fast that the two second-years gaping at her could never have seen it.

Harry was only ten feet down the corridor when Pansy's voice halted her.

"Miss Potter, wait," Pansy exclaimed. Harry steeled herself and turned, looking at Pansy with her head held high and nothing but polite interest on her face. "Won't you join us?" Pansy asked.

Harry would never have caught the uncertainty on Pansy's face if she didn't know her so well, but it was there—as if she had surprised herself by asking. Well, Harry told herself, this chance to make it exceptionally clear that you are not Rigel has been handed to you on a platter. She checked her occlumency shields, letting Rispah's voice and lessons wash over her. She wasn't Harry of the Lower Alleys or Rigel. She was Harriett Potter at Hogwarts—confident, relaxed, cheerful, and bitterly self-aware. It was entirely possible to demonstrate rage with a megawatt smile, as they were all going to find out. But they wouldn't find out quite yet. Harry smiled brightly at Pansy while letting one hand drop to her hip. With a warm voice, she murmured, "It would be my pleasure."

In the few moments it took Harry to return to the compartment, the others composed themselves. Their pureblood masks were so tightly fixed to their faces that it was a wonder they could make facial expressions at all. Draco's hand, gently laid across his lap, was white-knuckled, and he sent Pansy the faintest glare. Harry leaned against the doorframe of the compartment languidly, as if she couldn't stand up on her own. She had to fight her instinctual urge to slip into Rigel's perfect posture.

"Please," Pansy said invitingly, gesturing to a spot between herself and Millicent.

Harry sent her trunk up to the overhead compartment with barely a flick of her fingers, a gesture she had repeatedly practiced to appear careless and relaxed. She noted the way Draco's eyes slightly widened at the ease of the wandless levitation.

Harry folded herself gracefully down onto the proffered seat, laying her arm across the armrest so that it ever so slightly and impolitely dangled into Pansy's space. Theo was seated directly across from Harry, the faintest disgust evident in his unsubtle examination of her muggle attire. Blaise sat at Theo's side, his face as inscrutable as ever, and Draco was almost hunched against the window, as far from her as possible.

Harry shifted slightly as if searching for the best position. "These seats really aren't very inviting," she observed, her voice loud in the silent compartment. She twisted a bit and lifted her legs, slowly placing her feet onto the opposite bench in the gap between Draco and Theo. Millie coughed, unable to hold in her shock at the blatant lack of pureblood etiquette. Harry's thighs were brushing against Theo's knees, almost resting on them. Draco shifted even further away to avoid touching Harry's feet on the seat, carefully looking out the window. Theo's eyes, on the other hand, ran down the length of Harry's legs. He gaped and then collected himself. His cheeks went slightly red, and a dark thrum of amusement strummed within Harry. Woe is you, attracted to a halfblood, Harry thought to herself. He glanced up at her, drawing his shoulders back to mutter out a protest.

Harry looked up at him through her lashes, one of Rispah's best looks of half-gratitude, half-uncertainty. She held his eyes with her green ones and murmured, "You don't mind, do you?"

He swallowed heavily. "No, I, uh," he muttered, and then took a breath and turned on his pureblood politeness. "Please make yourself comfortable, Miss Potter."

Draco was still looking out the window pointedly, and Millicent just seemed appalled at Harry's rudeness. Blaise's narrowed eyes drifted between Theo and Harry, obviously aware that Harry was playing with Theo.

"We've met a few times now, haven't we, Mr. Nott?" Harry asked, looking at him sidelong and resting her hand on her thigh so that it slightly pulled up her skirt. The more intensely she played the character Rispah had taught her, the easier it was to pretend she didn't know the others so intimately and wasn't so strangely far. "I think you were the first I met out of all of you."

Theo nodded. "Yes, in Diagon Alley." He paused. "You look very different today."

Harry smirked. "I'm finally free of that awful face, yes." Draco's head turned at that, the faintest anger evident in the corners of his eyes. A part of Harry softened at his apparent defensiveness on behalf of the Rigel he had known, even though he knew the face Harry referred to wasn't Rigel's real face. Harry pushed away the part of her that felt for him. Refocusing on Theo, she leaned a little bit forward so that her cleavage was slightly visible. His eyes jumped down and then back to her face. Harry murmured, "I heard that at that first meeting you found my eyes…engaging, was it? Is that still true, Mr. Nott?"

Theo's throat clicked, and he looked at Pansy desperately. Whatever he had told Rigel about Harry had undoubtedly not been intended for her to hear. The horror of complimenting a halfblood had struck him in full. He had two bad options: he could openly insult her by denying his words, or he could make the blood purity faux pas of complimenting her worse by affirming the compliment.

Pansy jumped in to save him. "Oh, very. My mother had always told me how eerily bright the Potter Heiress's eyes were, and I'll admit to having been surprised when we met you before. Your eyes now are absolutely lovely, ever so bright."

"Poor Miss Potter," Draco said, glaring. "Resigned to spend so many years with dull eyes and a multitude of secrets. And now you are here at Hogwarts, unpunished, and Rigel's gone. Alls well that ends well, right?"

"You're quoting Shakespeare?" Harry asked, one eyebrow raised. "I wouldn't expect you to read muggle literature."

"What are you talking about? I'm not quoting anyone," Draco said, thrown by the change of subject. He shifted slightly and his aristocratic pureblood brows ever so slightly furrowed. "Who is Shakespeare?"

"All's well that ends well is the name of a famous Muggle play from the 1600s. It's by a genius named Shakespeare," Harry explained, widening her eyes to imply that this was common knowledge. To be fair, it absolutely should have been. "That's where that line comes from."

"It couldn't possibly. I've never heard of him."

"Wizarding culture and Muggle culture are linked in so many ways, and many wizarding terms come from Muggle culture," Harry said, smiling brightly. "I'd be happy to recommend some Muggle literature if you're curious." There was a long pause, and Harry took pity on them. "Anyway, I was punished! My parents grounded me for a few weeks. Bored to tears, you know. But we did cause them a few problems, I admit."

"I'm sure Rigel is bored too," Draco hissed. "Wherever he is on the run from Azkaban. He’s probably having a laugh."

"Do you know if he's alright?" Pansy asked softly. "We just want to know where he is."

"I've already been questioned a million times. I don't," Harry stated. She rolled her eyes. "And if I did, I wouldn't tell you."

"We care about him," Pansy said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. The rumble of the train winding its way through dreary, damp green hills almost covered her words entirely.

"You don't even know his name," Harry said dismissively, stretching her legs a bit farther into Draco's space and leaning her head against the back of the bench. It was a display of utter confidence and disregard from a stranger that could only be interpreted as offensive. Aggressive, almost. Even Pansy tensed slightly. Harry continued, "If you found him, you'd send him right to Azkaban."

Draco's head whipped around to face her. He hissed, "You don't know anything—"

"Oh?" Harry asked, her voice as light as if they were discussing the weather. "If you decided not to report him, you would be a party to the crime. And you would be admitting that you don't think he deserves Azkaban. Do you think blood identity theft is wrong or not, Draco?" She let the syllables of his name roll off of her tongue.

Draco's jaw clenched, and he said nothing. He was the Malfoy heir, and openly saying otherwise would be nigh on treason. Then, with herculean effort, he said, "He could have trusted us. We're his friends."

Harry pulled out a package of Droobles and popped it in her mouth, her loud chewing only increasing the tension that swirled around the compartment. She blew a bubble and then, when it popped, said, "You think he's scum. Don't lie. Just like you think I'm scum, and worse, fool enough to tell you something you can use to find him." She snorted. "It must be so hard not to hex me right now, Draco."

His hands tightened as she mockingly used his first name again.

Harry taunted, "I’m the perfect target for all the rage and betrayal you can't levy at the boy who told you nothing, sitting right here." She took her feet off the seat, sitting higher and turning to look at each of them thoughtfully. She let a dark smile drift across her face, murmuring, "Your mistake, you know, was being absolute dicks to me at that ball."

"Wha—" Millicent stopped herself. Even Blaise's eyebrow had shot up at the word dick. Pureblood manners were so strict, and it was a word Rigel would never have used.

Harry continued, "It was a test. He'd told you repeatedly that he loved me, that I was important to him, that I was his best friend and his future partner. If you cared about him more than you cared about blood, you would have been kind and welcoming to me. He would know that maybe—just maybe—he could someday tell you the truth." She laughed, a tinkling laugh that was unnatural to her. "But you made it very clear what you thought of me. Every cold shoulder, every rude comment—those hurt him as much as they hurt me. He felt what I felt." Harry stared at Draco, raising her chin. "Why would he ever trust you after that?"

Pansy bravely charged into the silence. "I enjoyed meeting you very much at the ball."

"You were actually rather nice," Harry said, spreading her hands wide. "You aren't bad at all, Miss Parkinson. And I think if Rigel was going to tell anyone, it might have been you. But you wouldn't have been able to keep it from Mr. Malfoy. And Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Nott and all of you had spent years making your thoughts about blood purity very clear."

Theo snarled defensively. "That's not—" he stopped suddenly, unsure what he was defending.

"That's not what? True?" Harry stared at Theo and then back to Draco, still mockingly using his first name as if they were friends. His lips were white, and the part of her that was Rigel begged her to stop, but Harry pushed that part of herself down. She had to make them hate her, make them never want to speak to her again. Continuing in her friendliest of tones, she said, "Imagine how it felt for him to be sitting there at breakfast and hear you say that the impure aren't even wizards. Or to be cozy in his chair in the common room and while you spat that halfbloods are no better than animals. You all love politics, and you love your blood purity nonsense, and every time you insulted those of us who aren't as lily-white pure as you, you were insulting him." Harry looked at each of them in the eyes, noting the varying degrees of pain and anger. She continued with an emotionless, thoughtful tone, "He would have died for you, and he almost did more than once. But he had to sit there and listen to you rant about how he was unqualified to hold a wand. Every word of bigotry stabbed him, and those words came again and again and again." Harry let her obviously fake smile drop. "You could have trusted Rigel to do anything for you, and he couldn't trust you at all."

Pansy's lips trembled, and she stared resolutely in the other direction. Draco glared at her, opening his mouth as if to protest but unable to do so without committing himself to an improper political stance.

With a mockingly bright tone, Harry clapped her hands together. She said, "Now that we've gotten that chat out of the way, anybody up for a game of exploding snap?"

"Seriously?" Theo bit out.

"So grim in here," Harry tittered, rolling her eyes.

Harry chewed her gum and blew out another bubble until it loudly popped. Millicent jumped and then shot a glare at Harry.

"I hope you are more fun than you seem, or I'm going to seriously doubt Rigel's taste in friends. Although I guess Rigel wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs either," Harry said, feeling defensive on Rigel's behalf even as the words came out of her mouth. The Rigel personality was far closer to her real personality than the role she was currently playing. Not that Harry really had any idea who she truly was inside. Regardless, insulting the Rigel they knew would help convince them she was someone different.

"Just leave," Draco said, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.

Harry turned to him, her eyes welling with obviously fake hurt. "After we've shared such a lovely time, I abruptly get tossed out on my arse?" She stood up and turned to the rack above, lifting onto her toes and waving her trunk down. She turned, caught Theo looking, and winked. "Thank Merlin it's such a good arse, right, Theo?"

His eyes flitted up from where they had slipped, and his nostrils flared in embarrassment. "Adequate at best," he hissed to cover his discomfort.

Harry waved her trunk ahead of her and slid open the compartment door.

A strangled gasp came from behind her, and Pansy cried out, "Will he ever come back?"

Harry didn't turn. She paused in the doorway, staring out so that none of them could see her face. "He'll return if you can give him a better world where he's welcome and equal," she said quietly. "He'll come back if you can give him a life worth living." Harry paused, letting that hang in the air for a long, frozen minute. She desperately wished they would want that world too. Then Harry moved again, languorously waving goodbye over her shoulder and calling out as she left, "But why would you do anything for him? He's nothing but a filthy halfblood. Our lives don't matter, right?"

She heard a sob spill out of the compartment right before the door slid shut, but Harry's firm steps forward didn't stutter. That door was closed to her for good.

* * *

The Sorting Hat enjoyed a few jokes at Harry's expense before giving in to her pleading and sorting her into Ravenclaw. It wasn't Gryffindor, but it wasn't Slytherin either, so her father would accept it without too much grumbling.

Harry spent the first meal smiling, introducing herself, and shaking hands. She answered questions about Rigel with rueful, inoffensive shrugs and apologies. She charmed and laughed and realized for the first time how easy it was to make people like her with her father's easy humor.

There were a decent number of stiff backs and side-eyes—Ravenclaw had its own share of blood purists and even more Neutrals—but the most significant reaction to her blood status was curiosity. Of course, they didn't ask questions that first night. Ravenclaws are too patient and prefer to thoroughly observe the terrain before committing themselves.

Eventually, when their polite instincts wore off, the questions came. As a halfblood, Harry was like a zoo animal. To the blood purists, she was a disgusting and untrustworthy hyena, while the ones who didn't care all that much about blood purity treated her like a cute, non-threatening koala; regardless, the Ravenclaws enjoyed studying Harry as a prime specimen of her kind.

Over the next few days, once they had gotten used to her smiles and general good humor, the Ravenclaws adjusted to her. They smiled at her in the morning and said "goodnight" when she retired. The two friendliest girls in her dorm waited for her before going to breakfast and sat next to her in the classes they shared. Harry created a routine, starting off the morning with bacon at breakfast. In class, she drew attention to herself with cheerfully asked questions and comments on the material. In classes with Slytherin, she never looked at their side of the room. After dinner, she would retreat to the Ravenclaw common room, tired from a day spent ignoring muttered slurs and the occasional trip jinx. It only took two weeks for being at Hogwarts to become an aching, strange type of normal.

* * *

On the fifteenth day of the term, Archie called Harry in the mirror. After some hurried logistical questions and updates, Archie rubbed his hands together and asked, "Well? Have you shown them that you're not just Lady Harriett Potter? That you're Badass Harry Fucking Potter?"

“I don’t know if I want to be Harriett Fucking Potter.”

Archie looked at her appraisingly.“Yeah, you do.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know everything.”

* * *

Harry passed the Slytherin table on her way to her seat the next morning and paused as a dark-haired boy with his back to her jeered, "that halfblood slut tries to act like—"

"Shh," the chinless boy across the table from him hissed, his eyes flicking up to Harry with an amusing lack of subtlety. They were third-years at most, but Harry couldn't imagine Draco or Pansy or Blaise ever having such a lack of situational awareness while gossiping. They had a lot to learn, and she supposed it was time somebody taught them. She calmly turned to face the Slytherin table and tapped the boy on the shoulder.

He turned around, twin stripes of red appearing across his cheeks as he faced her. And then he gathered himself. With his most dismissive sniff, he hissed, "Are you lost? This is the Slytherin table."

Harry smiled. She made no effort to be quiet, purposefully pitching her voice to be heard as she responded, "Please continue. You were at 'that halfblood slut tries to act like.' I'd love to hear the end of that sentence."

Harry's lips twitched slightly at the way the silence rippled out away from her, nudges and side-eyes silencing anyone who was within hearing distance. She'd spent so long avoiding the spotlight that all the gazes made her skin itch, and a part of her want to hide, but a larger part of her enjoyed it. The sheer novelty was fascinating. Harry wished Archie was there to see her put on the show he'd insisted was necessary. It would be nice to have one friendly member in the audience.

The boy glanced to each side, clearly debating if backing down would make him seem weak or polite. He decided it would make him look weak, as she knew he would, and squared his shoulders. Harry was faintly appreciative. Rispah had taught her a withering glare, as well, and Harry was fully aware that the force of it on a boy several years younger was intimidating. But the boy faced her head on and said, "I was saying that you—"

"The halfblood slut," Harry interrupted, nodding encouragingly.

His jaw clenched. "You are acting like you belong when a halfblood has no place at Hogwarts. You're poisoning this school."

Harry raised one eyebrow. "Oh, yes, my audacious choice to attend my classes and eat lunch in the hall and sleep in my bed. How, exactly, should I be acting?" She decided to add gasoline to the fire and didn't wait for him to respond, pointing instead at a sixth-year girl several seats down. She knew Adelia Carrow was a vehement blood purist from a family not known for its tact. "What do you think, Miss…sorry, I'm afraid I don't actually know who you are."

Adelia Carrow's ledge of a chin lifted two notches higher. "Carrow," she said haughtily. "I think you should be sleeping in the kennels with the groundskeeper's dogs. No matter how much they wash your sheets, I'm sure the stench of you has permeated your poor House, and a bitch should be kept with the other bitches to rut without disgusting the rest of us." There was a round of whispers that danced through the room at her vitriol. Miss Carrow continued, "Since they've decided to let you in with your betters, you could at least show a little gratitude."

Harry observed the discomfort flashing across a good number of the Slytherin's faces. Whatever their sentiments, the purebloods generally preferred a subtler approach. Harry was gleeful rather than insulted. Miss Carrow calling Harry a bitch had more than sufficiently crossed the line from political opinion to bigotry—not that Harry believed there was such a line in blood discrimination—and given Harry plenty of justification to respond in kind.

"Thank you for your opinion. I do so value honesty," Harry said, her smile thinning into a dagger. "So I'll be honest in return." She cast a wordless sonorous. Her voice boomed across the hall, startling the students at the other tables, as Harry murmured, "Miss Carrow here thinks that a halfblood bitch like me should be showing my gratitude more effusively. Therefore, I would like to thank all of you at this fine institution for your warm welcome."

Out of the corner of her eye, Harry saw both Snape and McGonagall start to get up to stop the commotion, but Dumbledore waved them back. Harry's lip twitched with satisfaction. Dumbledore, at least, wanted to hear what she was going to say.

"Your hexes and whispers and slurs have certainly not gone unnoticed, but I admit I thought it would be worse. Not one of you here has been strong enough or fast enough to send a hex my way I can't block. Pathetic, honestly,” Harry taunted, tapping her chin. “And you don't have any real insults that stick, so you try and call me a slut or a bitch?" Harry tossed her hair dramatically and cooed, "It's okay to think I'm beautiful. You know it's true. These constant attempts to call me a slut don't hide how desperately you all want an invitation to my bed. Unfortunately, I've yet to be impressed by any of you." Her gaze skipped across the room, landing on various gaping faces with disdainful amusement.

A Slytherin seventh-year started to stand, snarling, "You think you—"

Harry silenciod him with a flick of her fingers. "Silence," Harry commanded, the word ricocheting around the hall. "It's my turn to speak."

Another girl reached for her wand, but her neighbor stopped her, a calculating curiosity on his face. Harry was glad. She wasn't ready for this to devolve into a brawl. Harry knew she could hold a shield under the combined efforts of all of Slytherin house for far longer than they could supply the magic, but she didn't want a fight.

There was a gap in the Slytherin bench next to the first boy who spoke. Harry stepped onto the bench and then the table, her magic shoving the plates and silverware out of her way. The Slytherins hissed and swore as food got dumped into nearby laps, but Harry ignored them, peering out over the sea of heads. "I'm not here to be grateful," she called out. "I'm not here to joyfully accept the scraps from your table. You seem to have some mistaken belief that you own this particular table and that you are allowing me a seat. Bullshit. I've always owned a seat and you purebloods have cheated me out of my rightful property. Now, I'm taking what I’m owed."

She started to strut down the table, the food and silverware continuing to move to make room for her steps. Twenty feet ahead of her, she noticed Blaise vanishing the food and utensils in front of him to avoid the indignity of waffles in his lap. The others in her former group quickly followed his lead, but Harry stopped before she got within ten feet of them.

Harry noticed another boy go for his wand, and she flicked up a clear but transparent shield. She held it not because she needed a shield but to signal that she wouldn't tolerate any interruptions.

Harry continued, "I know that my lack of gratitude must be confusing. After all, why shouldn't I be honored to be around the oh so holy purebloods?" Harry laughed out loud. "I think I need to make one thing clear. If I had the option right now to become a pureblood, I wouldn't take it. I have absolutely no desire to be part of your stifled, inbred cult."

A boy near her gripped his butter knife with white fingers. Harry winked at him and vanished it from right between his fingers. He glanced at her wand hand, shocked, but her wand hadn't moved.

"Uh uh," Harry clucked. She dropped her shield and said, "Don't worry, I'll let you all get back to your breakfast soon, but I'm going to say my piece first. Don't fucking interrupt me." She paused. "I'm _proud_ to be a halfblood. It's a good life. I have an adorable sister and could have more siblings if my parents wanted. Someday, I will have as many children as I like, while you lot have empty cradles and mansions and loneliness. You're clinging to your bigotry at the cost of extinction," Harry emphasized, her voice sharp. " _I_ don't have to make that choice."

Harry shrugged her arms around, ignoring the tension her discussion of the Fade had provoked. It was an incredibly sensitive topic, and she knew her words were hurtful. But the point she was making was worth the anger it would incite. She said, "I like being a halfblood for more than just fertility. I don't even know if I want kids. I like being me because I'm fucking killing it. I'm one of the best potioneers of my generation, and I've already invented a new brewing method. I'm brilliant, and I'm special. So why would I want to be different?" She paused for a long second, wincing internally at the overt bragging. Just as she saw Theo's mouth start to open, Harry added thoughtfully, "You know, I can't really see all that well, even from here. Maybe I should get higher."

She asked her magic to lift the table. Although she could easily have done the magic wandlessly, she pointed her wand at the table so that the Slytherins all knew she was the one doing the lifting. A levitation spell is simple—what matters is the scale. The table started to rise, and along with it came the two long benches bearing two hundred Slytherins. It was an incredible waste of power, and Harry could already feel the weight of the entire Slytherin house draining away at her core.

Her sonorous charm rising over the shrieks, Harry exclaimed cheerfully, "I'm also really fucking powerful. I'm Lillian Potter's daughter, and whatever you say about her, she has power. So do I."

"Stop this, Potter," Draco cut in from down the table, with the confidence of a boy used to being obeyed.

Harry grinned at him, letting her dimples show. The table and benches kept rising. They were almost fifteen feet in the air, and a long line of Slytherins gripped the table edge with white knuckles. "Don't worry, Mr. Malfoy," Harry responded, winking at him. "Along with Lillian Potter's magic, I have James Potter's control. I won't let any of you fall."

"Put. Us. Down," he demanded through gritted teeth.

Harry winced internally at what this must be doing to his empathy, but she wasn't quite ready to stop. He would survive, and she could feel guilty later.

"We're going to die," one girl shrieked.

Harry rolled her eyes internally, fully aware that Dumbledore was standing with his wand out, ready to intervene. "You're not going to die," Harry reassured her, skipping a bit on the table. The entire room gasped, terrified the table would drop when she moved. Harry said firmly, "I would save you. Because just like Rigel, I'm not a fucking asshole, and I care about people even if they suck."

Draco flinched when he heard Rigel’s name. Harry’s eyes barely landed on him, and then she turned away. She began to pace up and down the table like a feral cat working the runway in a fashion show.

"Let's talk about Rigel, shall we? Rigel saved your asses again and again and again. And he was able to do that because like me, he's a halfblood with a shit ton of firepower. Rigel didn't help you _despite_ being a halfblood. He could help you _because_ he is a halfblood. Rigel was going to save lives, but you drove him away. You turned your back on the best person in this school because you didn't like his parents?" Harry shouted, her voice rising as the table floated higher. "And me? I'm going to change the face of potion-making. But you don't want me here. Hermione Granger—remember her? Bushy hair and huge brain?—is the closest anyone has ever come to curing the Fade. She's putting her all into curing a disease that will never affect her or her family because she's a _good person_ who cares about people who don't give a fuck about her. And she's going to cure The Fade because her muddy blood gives her knowledge from the muggle world of advancements you couldn't imagine. But Granger's not allowed at Hogwarts unless she's risking death in some bullshit tournament." Harry paused, a smirk crawling across her face, and she said with faux sugar, "The tournament you lot lost, by the way." She threw both hands in the air. "Go halfbloods!"

Harry met the younger Greengrass's eyes. She was staring at Harry, her expression unreadable, and Harry wondered what Astoria would write about this moment to Daphne. Harry thought about Daphne, so annoying and hateful and completely qualified to attend Hogwarts.

Harry took a deep breath and then exhaled deeply, the adrenaline of the moment almost overwhelming her. The sound of the hall cut out and then in again, and when she spoke, it was with exhausted calm. "You keep on telling yourselves we're poisoning you," she said, meeting eye after eye as she looked up and down the line of floating students. "We're not the poison. We're the fucking antidote. And you don't deserve us at all."

Even with all her power, the strain of keeping the massive table and benches and two hundred people was draining her core at an alarming rate. Harry had no intention of showing weakness, so it was time to wrap things up. She walked farther down the table, every eye glued to her as she moved, and finally stopped in front of her former friends. Harry met Draco's eyes.

She aimed the words at him as the sonorous charm made them ring all around them, hurling her words like grenades. "Your bigotry is unfounded, small-minded, and self-destructive." Harry saw Draco's jaw clench, but he did not embarrass the Malfoy name by reacting in any other way. Harry exhaled, and continued, "Let me make myself clear. I'm as smart as any of you. I'm as skilled as any of you. And I am so much more powerful than any of you."

She looked away from Draco to Millicent, Blaise, Theo, and finally Pansy. Pansy's hands were holding tightly to the edge of the table, but she didn't look afraid.

Harry spun in a slow circle, her hands mockingly in the air like she had won an award. "I'm not begging for a seat at the table. As you can see, I own the table." She told her magic to let the table suddenly drop a foot as she gestured, and all the students screeched. They were still solidly twenty feet up in the air. She lifted the table higher again with a wave of her hand. Harry shouted, "It's my fucking table! And at my table, anybody who wants a seat gets one!" She glared at all of them. "So you all better learn how to make space."

For a brief second, she considered ending it there and lowering the table back down, but the little imaginary Archie in her head insisted on a grand finish. Her rapidly diminishing magic lifted everything on the table up and over her head. Harry stalked to the very end of the table, letting her magic swirl her skirt and robes around her for effect. Harry turned to face the long line of Slytherins stretching down the massive table.

"For now, get the fuck out of my face and out of my way,” she said with a flutter of her eyelashes, her voice high and sweet. “Or I will move you."

Harry blew the Slytherins a kiss and stepped off the table into thin air.

The hall echoed with gasps and shouts. The Slytherins, still trapped up on the table, couldn't see the double backflips she performed on her way down or her perfect landing on her feet. The rest of the room did. She curtseyed, and the Gryffindors all started whistling and cheering, creating a hysterical cacophony of sound the way only Gryffindors can. Harry winked at them.

At last, Harry told her magic to bring the table down. It slowly descended until the table, the benches, and all the little schoolchildren had been returned to the ground.

Harry made her way to the Ravenclaw table, her smile fixed on her face as they rapidly shifted out of the way to make room for her. She slipped lightly into her seat. Her muscles were trembling, but she didn't let herself sag. Harry sipped at a glass of water she would rather have chugged, forcing herself to look unbothered as she ate as fast as was polite. She was ravenous and entirely drained. It was easier to focus on what was happening in her body than to process the mess of emotions—guilt, hurt, anger—that accompanied the previous ten minutes. She could deal with feelings later.

Harry winced internally when she noticed side-eyes and frightened glances from the other Ravenclaws. She’d been getting on fine with her house before, and it would be a shame to lose that.

A chestnut-haired boy a year older, whose name she couldn't quite remember, leaned forward. "Potter?" he asked hesitantly.

"Mm?"

He grinned and stuck out his hand. "I'm not really one for politics, but you've got me convinced. And also half terrified. That was a damn good show."

Harry blinked and then smiled back, shaking his hand firmly. "It was, wasn't it?" Under the guilt and the stress, a new emotion bubbled up, stronger than either. It took her a second to recognize it as deep, biting satisfaction. They had all had that coming. As Rigel, Harry would never have imagined saying any of the words she had just hurled at her former friends. She would have continued excusing all of their prejudice as inherited and not their fault. But you can love people and still recognize when they are fundamentally wrong. Deep down, Harry had been waiting to shout at them all along.

Harry whispered to herself, "A damn good show."

* * *

The next morning, Harry got up and put on her colorful Muggle exercise clothes. Archie had insisted that if she went running, she wear a sports bra. "You need to remind them you have boobs," he'd exclaimed, emphasizing how difficult it would be to change the way she ran. It honestly felt like Archie was pimping her out because he thought it was amusing, but he wasn't wrong about the running.

Harry hadn't gone running since she arrived. As part of her plot to avoid being anywhere she might be seen by people she knew well, she used the Room of Requirement to exercise. But Harry was still buzzing with energy from the previous day. She was going to be in detentions for the next month, but it was worth it.

Harry pushed herself, running harder than she had in ages, sweat dripping down her skin as her feet pounded the grass.

"Miss Potter," a soft voice called out to her. Harry paused and turned.

Two familiar, sweaty shapes caught up with her. Draco and Pansy were clearly halfway through their own run. Pansy had a friendly smile on her face as she stepped forward. Draco stayed where he was, uncomfortably distant for a conversation. His face was blank. Harry noted with amusement that both of them seemed discomfited by her muggle sports bra, their eyes flicking towards her breasts and away. A bit too much skin for a pureblood.

"Miss Parkinson, Mr. Malfoy," Harry said, eyeing them both up and down with a raised eyebrow. "What's gotten you two so deliciously hot and sweaty on a morning like this?" She tucked her chin and smiled at them seductively. "And more importantly, why wasn't I invited to join?" Draco's eyes flashed at the implication, but Pansy squeezed his arm.

"Exercising," Pansy said, ignoring Harry's obviously meaningless flirtation. Pansy's hands were splayed wide in her conversational mode, a familiar tic that meant she was nervous. "We'll do calisthenics next if you'd like to join us?"

"I wasn't aware Purebloods knew calisthenics," Harry said. "It's a Muggle thing."

"We didn't know it was Muggle when—"Draco broke off, looking away. "When Rigel taught us," Pansy finished.

Harry nodded, bouncing on her toes. She didn't want to get caught in a conversation with them. Draco looked so tense he seemed about to snap, and she wasn't particularly interested in getting lectured about the day before.

Pansy stepped forward again, a little too close, and Harry stepped back. Pansy stopped abruptly, her outstretched hand pausing. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then said hurriedly, "Rigel taught us a lot of things." She put a strange emphasis on the words.

Harry's cheerful smile froze uncomfortably as she gazed at Pansy. Pansy looked at the floor. It was the most flustered Harry had ever seen her in a conversation. Pansy finally said, "He taught us a lot of things, but I think he could have taught us more. I think he was trying to teach us more." She fidgeted, pushing a sweaty hair behind her ear. "But we didn't want to listen."

"He was trying to teach you more exercise routines?" Harry said, unwilling to make the conversation easy even as part of her lightened.

"No," Draco bit out. "More about…about—"

"About the world," Pansy said awkwardly. "About people. And, you know, about, well, magic."

Harry just stared at them.

Draco's hands clenched, and he looked over Harry's shoulder as he said flatly, "About blood."

Pansy continued haltingly, "Rigel isn't here anymore. But maybe it isn't too late for us."

"Too late for you to do what?" Harry asked, desperately trying to hold back the hope.

Draco said, "For us to listen."

"No," Pansy said, shaking her head abruptly. "Not just to listen. It is not too late for us to learn."

Harry spun around, ignoring the sharp gasp behind her as she composed herself. When she turned back towards them, it was with the patented- Harriett Potter grin desperately tacked on top of a tidal wave of joy. "Are you sure, Mr. Malfoy?" Harry asked, gazing at Draco pointedly. Pansy had always seemed the closest to accepting her politics. Draco's entire world was based on blood politics and the SOW party. She couldn't bear it if he took one step forward and then fled back again. She couldn't handle having the hope crushed.

He looked at her with the confused, overwhelmed gaze of a boy trying to relearn how to breathe. The gaze of someone letting go of their past, and desperate for something new to fill it, but terrified that new thing would increase the pain. But as Harry watched, he set his jaw and pushed his shoulders back, firmly meeting her eyes. He stated, "You said Rigel would return if we gave him a world worth returning to."

Harry nodded.

Draco's returning nod was a single, tense jerk of his aristocratic chin. "I don't know what that world would look like. I don't know what Rigel's life was like outside of Hogwarts. But if you can tell me, I'll learn." He turned away from her and met Pansy's eyes, something unreadable passing between the two of them. For a second, Harry ached to be on the inside of their conversation, but then Draco spoke again. His gray eyes had lightened to quicksilver, and they gleamed almost fanatically in the morning sun. Draco said, "Rigel doesn't just deserve a better world. He deserves a perfect one." He swallowed deeply, his chin jutting out with a mixture of insecurity and certainty only a Malfoy could show. "I'm going to give him the world," Draco said intently, "and he's going to come back."

Harry’s breath caught in her throat. "That's a bold promise.”

"I'm a Malfoy," Draco said haughtily, returning to more familiar ground. "What we want, we get."

Harry nodded slowly, biting her lip as she surveyed the two of them. They were dirt-speckled and greasy, and they had never looked more beautiful. "Okay," Harry said, jerking her head forward. "We can talk while we run."

Three figures jogged away along the edge of the lake, their feet quickly falling into step as they tread a familiar path. Harry's voice drifted over the wind, cheesy like a muggle infomercial. "So you want to learn about blood-based discrimination…"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was never intended to be multi-chapter. It was written as a oneshot, and the first chapter can be read and enjoyed as such. I've been on the fence about continuing it, but the wonderful encouragement I received made me want to try. That being said, if you felt satisfied with the first chapter, please feel no need to continue! Everything from here on out is just me having fun and messing around.
> 
> I am picking and choosing what to use from FF and DD, so as I continue this fic, it won't be perfectly consistent with DD in particular, but will still pull from it. 
> 
> Important: the very first scene of this chapter jumps back in time and happens the night of the table event, and then in the next scene we return to the bit with Pansy and Draco that was the end of the first chapter. From there on, everything has a normal timeline. Enjoy!

"Miss Potter is quite the spirited girl," Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling as he settled into his rocking chair by the fire and surveyed the inhabitants of the staff room. Severus was giving his best impression of a serial killer, eyeing Pomona, Minerva, and Flitwick with murderous intent as they begged him to taste the delectable plum tart the house elves had provided to sustain them for the long meeting ahead. Dumbledore unwrapped a lemon drop he’d pulled out of nowhere and popped it in his mouth, and then said around it, "That was a most intriguing dinner."

"Intriguing?" Severus hissed. "The entirety of my house was in mortal danger at the hands of a tempestuous adolescent. Why did you stop us from intervening? She put them all in danger."

"They were in no danger, Severus," Dumbledore said, chuckling. "All five of us were standing there, ready to swoop in."

"Reckless child endangerment," Severus muttered, his nostrils flaring.

“Lemon drop, Severus?” Dumbledore offered, an impossibly large bag of hundreds of the candies appearing out of his voluminous robes. As an attempt to placate Severus, it failed—the professor just scoffed—and Dumbledore chuckled to himself. He continued, "As an educator, I have always found that curiosity is the best guide for action. I was curious to see what she would do."

Minerva leaned forward. "It was remarkable. She's even more powerful than Mr.—." She hesitated. "Than Rigel. When Pettigrew caused all the animals to go wild two years ago, Rigel held a table against the window, but he had help, and he had to stop after a few minutes. She held a massive wooden table, two benches, and two hundred students up for almost ten minutes and didn't break a sweat. She's undoubtedly Lord level." She paused. "To have two Lord level children of the same age is incredible."

Pomona murmured, "The rise of so many of power in one era is a message from the gods. This is a tumultuous time, and the Great Mother is surely watching."

Severus snorted. "I'm sure Miss Potter would love to hear that the gods were watching that little performance. She appears to love attention. She insisted that all of Hogwarts watch her song and dance, and quite literally took Slytherin House as a captive audience." He snarled, "Her father would be proud."

Pomona clucked. "You mock the gods at your own risk, Severus."

Severus shot her a glare. "I'll take that chance."

Filius's bell-like laugh fluttered through the room. "While I agree with you, Severus, that perhaps it may have been wise to intervene sooner—if only to prevent Lucius Malfoy from strutting in here to claim that the Hogwarts leadership has entirely lost control—I do think you are a little bit harsh on the girl. She was undoubtedly provoked."

"And she could have come to a professor for assistance," Severus said.

"Could she have come to us?" Minerva said, her brows furrowed. "You caught what she said about the attempted hexes, and we all heard Miss Carrow's atrocious words. We can't be everywhere. The poor girl is one of four halfbloods at Hogwarts and the only one in her year. She clearly felt unsafe and seems to have decided that the best defense is a good offense." Minerva nodded firmly, the corners of her mouth lifting. "Taking them on headfirst rather than hiding. Very Gryffindor."

Severus grimaced. "Filius," he hissed. "Defend your house. Don't let Minerva get her hands on your student. Next thing we know, Miss Potter will be back on the tables, but this time waving Godric's sword and decapitating first years."

"She's _your_ apprentice, is she not?" Filius asked, smiling amiably. "Besides, the girl is too creative to do the same thing twice. I'd guess defenestration is more likely than decapitation."

Pomona interrupted the squabble sharply. "That Miss Potter felt the need to go to such drastic measures to combat the vitriol she is receiving is a rebuke to all of us." The fire crackled in the heavy silence that sat over the room for a long moment. "We have clearly not assisted her sufficiently so far."

"Special treatment would make her struggle entirely useless," Severus said. "If the girl is trying to prove that halfbloods can succeed at Hogwarts, then giving her preferential attention would only provide ammunition for her opponents to claim she cheated." He paused, looking down at his hands. With a hard edge to his voice, he said, "And she is part of the now-infamous trio of pureblood pretenders. All three were clearly unwilling to involve adults in any of their doings. Merlin knows Rigel avoided turning to adults for help at all costs. I doubt the Potter girl is more likely to seek adult interference. _Foolish, imbecilic, reckless_ children," he hissed.

"Imbecilic, she is not," Filius countered. "Her coursework has been outstanding in these first few weeks. She barely needs to pay attention in class. She seems incredibly relaxed while I lecture, sometimes almost completely sprawled on the desk. But she is never asleep."

"She's undoubtedly gifted at transfiguration as well. It's remarkable, considering that she was self-taught, other than a correspondence course that can be best described as sufficient. Miss Potter is one of the most confident students I've ever taught and very willing to make comments in class. She isn't shy."

"That has been well established," Severus muttered.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled again. "You seem upset with your apprentice. Was her behavior not in keeping with your dignity, Severus?"

"A Potions Mistress cannot be overly emotional or dramatic if she wishes to survive the experimentation process," Severus said. "It is a precise and dangerous art, and she is well on her way to losing her nose. So yes, her performance was undignified."

Dumbledore took his glasses off his crooked nose and breathed heavily on one of the lenses until it fogged up. He said, "Dignity means different things to different people," and then carefully focused on cleaning them with his colorful, star-spangled robe.

Severus raised his eyebrows, pointedly gazing at Dumbledore's robes and his general sense of elderly disarray. "Indeed. I am entirely at a loss as to how you define the term—your idea of dignity is a mystery to me."

Dumbledore chuckled. "The young seek dignity. The aged know humility. You will learn that when you are as old as I." He gazed around the room and then back at Severus. "I am curious, however, about how Miss Potter's behavior over her time here, including the events of earlier tonight, line up to your previous meetings with her."

"Her potions work is excellent, as I have always known. Like her…predecessor…I excused her from the potions classes. We have been doing reviewing the basics in our individual sessions. With the business of the beginning of the semester, I have only had three so far, and I expect to increase those meetings to twice a week in the coming week." He pursed his lip. "I wish to ensure she is at the level Rigel had claimed she was. She may be an inventor of note at a young age, but I wish to be certain that her basics are at the level I demand." He paused. "She lacks some of Rigel's gifts. His instincts."

Minerva looked at him pityingly. "We will find the boy, Severus. He is not gone forever. And you cannot judge her by him. She is her own person."

Severus's eyes flashed. "I will evaluate my apprentices by my own standards."

"And her personality?" Dumbledore asked. "What have you observed over time?"

"Miss Potter is a confident girl. She smiles when there is nothing to smile about. She is proud of her work and does not sell herself short." His eyebrow quirked. "That is unsurprising, considering that she was raised by a group of pompous egoists with heads so heavy no broom could carry them—"

"Childish rivalry, Severus," Minerva muttered.

Severus glared at her and continued talking as if she hadn't opened her mouth. "I would not have expected tonight's absurdity, but in hindsight, it isn't so uncharacteristic of what I know of her. But I have only met with her a handful of times. For the duration of those meetings, we primarily discussed potions." His lips thinned to a white slash against his sallow face. "I have no interest in her personal life or her feelings—"

"Are teenage girls outside of your area of expertise?" Minerva asked innocently. She folded her hands across her lap, her lips twitching as Severus glared.

"—although I remain certain she knows more about Rigel's whereabouts than she is telling. She used her engagement with Mr. Black to legally protect herself from veritaserum. But if she truly knew so little, she would not have refused it."

Dumbledore lifted a hand questioningly. "Perhaps. However, there are many reasons to avoid such a potion." He nodded, gazing over his spectacles into thin air. "We must indeed locate young Rigel, or whatever his name is. The boy is in danger as long as he is unprotected."

"I am aware," Severus said, his voice taut as a wire. "I will find him. I will find out what she knows."

Filius frowned. "She is just a girl, Severus. Treat her kindly and patiently, as you would a normal student."

Severus raised an eyebrow. Pomona suppressed a giggle.

Filius corrected himself hastily. "Treat her more kindly than you would a normal student."

Dumbledore nodded to himself. "A most intriguing student. She will bear close watching." He held out the candy baggy. "Are you quite sure you don’t want a lemon drop, Severus? I think a nice sugary sweet would put a smile back on your face." Severus stared at him. Dumbledore smiled. "Perhaps later, then?"

* * *

"So you want to learn about blood-based discrimination…" Harry said, smiling. Pansy and Draco ran next to her, their feet pounding into the grass. "In summary, it fucking sucks."

Draco shot her a red-cheeked glare, a line of sweat dripping down his angular face. "Yes, you've covered that. I was present last night for your excessive display of emotion."

"Draco!" Pansy exclaimed, quelling him.

Harry's lip twitched. She dropped the smile and said through panting breaths, "I am entirely aware that you were, in fact, thoroughly shielded from my own emotions. But I do apologize for how the feelings my rant inspired in others impacted you. I am aware that it would have been a strain on you particularly."

Draco stopped abruptly, forcing Harry to backtrack when she ran past him. "You shouldn't know about that," he said, his thin eyebrows drawing together. "Rigel said he told you because he trusted you, but you told the Aurors you never even met him."

Harry bit the inside of her cheek. This was the problem with spending time with them. Her mouth was dry as she was hit with an understanding of how perilous it was for her to be around Draco and Pansy and inspire questions she didn't want to be asked. She said with a calm she was not feeling, "I did not meet him, but we three exchanged excessively long and detailed letters. Any information that one of us knew, the rest of us needed to know as well to ensure that we could pretend to be each other with little or no warning."

"Rigel writes horrible letters," Draco said, shaking his head.

"Rigel does what needs to be done, whether or not he enjoys it," Harry said flatly. "You of all people should know that."

"But how could he trust you if he never even met you?" Draco exclaimed. A vein in his jaw clenched as if he was trying to suppress anger, but in the bitterness of the glare he directed at Harry, she could tell he was jealous. Draco was one of those boys who believed he was subtle while being entirely obvious.

Harry shrugged. "He trusted us because he had to. From the minute he got on the Hogwarts express, we had to trust each other. It was the only way." She looked at him side-long. "Besides, you all wrote excessively detailed reports on Rigel to your families. He wrote excessively detailed reports to Archie and me. Are you really going to whine about it?"

"It's different! You're a Potter! You're in Dumbledore's fucking pocket!"

It wasn't different at all, and he knew it. The hypocrisy grated. Harry smiled, but with her teeth bared, it was more of a feline grimace. "Yes, I stand for the Light. And I know details about every single Slytherin Rigel ever interacted with. I know about your families. I know many of your secrets. I know the contents of each and every core Rigel passed through." She laughed. "Rigel didn't like politics. He didn't tell me about you or observe you for the sake of politics. He just told us because we needed to know in case we had to be him, and it came up. And, to be fair, when I was younger and first getting all those reports, I also didn't care about politics. But in the past year, it has become clearer to me that I have to care about politics. I don't have an option to ignore it, as much as I long to inside. Politics is new to me. But I'm good at everything I try." Harry shrugged. "So isn't it lucky for me that Rigel was, whatever his intent, a snake in your bosom?" She grinned. "That pun _was_ intentional."

Draco was a mess of flushed pink and alabaster white, as if a house painter had started to whitewash him but stopped for a cheese and pickle sandwich halfway through the job. While Harry had spoken, Pansy's look of polite interest had frozen so firmly Harry could have poked her nose, and not a muscle on her face would move. Harry watched as Draco was hit, probably not for the first time, with the more profound political implications of his friendship with Rigel. Each time Harry banged on the wedge between Draco and his memory of Rigel, it felt like taking a hammer to herself. But Harry had to give a reason for any slips she might give, any time she might reveal that she knew more than she really should. And Draco needed to know that his white knight ideal, his dream of Rigel coming back after Draco learned to say nice things about halfbloods, wasn't some fantasy that existed separate from the real world. It wasn't a game; if he was taking Rigel's side, he needed to fully understand that he was turning against his own. Pansy and Draco had approached her not because they agreed with or believed in blood equality. They approached her for Rigel. And that may have been a good enough reason to reel them in, but it didn't make them angels. They talked about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Harry knew from personal experience that it was the exact way to fail at doing the right thing entirely.

Harry took a step backward, almost stumbling in her trainers. How was she supposed to change them? Being pureblood, worshipping pureblood culture, obsessing over pureblood lineages and politics shaped their movements, their handwriting, the jokes they told. How was she supposed to transform them entirely? Was there even a middle-ground to be found? Maybe this was why Harry had never allowed herself to judge them, to be bitter, to recognize her anger. To judge them would mean recognizing the impossibility of the task, recognizing that much of what she loved about them was intimately tied to what made them look down on her. The emotions of the past ten minutes overwhelmed her, almost overcoming her occlumency shields. She didn't know what to do.

"I knew he had to lie to us," Draco said, stepping forward slightly. "I didn't know he chose to spill all our secrets. He said once that if I trusted him, I trusted who he trusted. And so the reverse is true too—if I don't trust who he trusted, I don't trust him." He glared at her. "You jest about betrayal."

"I jest about survival," Harry said, pressing her lips together. She played with her ponytail for a second, holding onto the unfamiliar locks just to have something to hold onto. "If I don't laugh, I might just cry." Then she paused, smiling again. "But don't worry, I won't. I wouldn't give any of you the satisfaction."

"We aren't your enemy," Pansy said. Her arms wrapped around her chest in a sad mockery of a hug.

"Aren't we?" Draco asked, staring out at Harry from half-lidded eyes.

"Asshole pureblood Draco, back so soon," Harry said, a hand on one hip. "What has it been, fifteen minutes of basic decency? I must say, I'm surprised you made it that long." She raised an eyebrow, dragging her eyes up and down his body. Her lip twitched. "You look like you couldn't last thirty seconds."

"Dirty jokes? How plebian," Draco hissed. "Pureblood Draco never left. He just had a momentary lapse of sanity. This is a fucking mistake."

"You don't mean that, Draco," Pansy exclaimed. She turned to Harry. "He doesn't mean that. We love Rigel."

"Do I? Do I even fucking know him? That's what I ask myself again and again."

Harry's heart twisted ninety degrees, but she didn't flinch. She stared at him, her eyes tracing the familiar lines of his face. There was the faintest blurring in her eyes, and those lines didn't quite add up. If he wasn't even sure if he loved Rigel, there was no way he would ever love Harry. And she wasn't going to let him close enough for it to ever be a possibility. Harry wiped any expression off her face and palmed her knife. Draco flicked up a shield, and Harry laughed. "Fuck off, Malfoy. I'm not going to shiv you." With a flick of her fingers, she cast a lightning jaw, and as it flickered, stepped through his shield.

"What the—"

"Shh," Harry said, mock soothingly. She grabbed his left hand, and in a quick slash, cut down his palm.

"Halfblood bitch," he yelped, stumbling back.

Harry laughed loudly. "There he is," she said. She sliced her left hand effortlessly and yanked his hand back. She pushed their hands together, holding firm as he tried to shake her off. With his right hand, he pressed his wand against her neck. She didn't stop clasping his hand. Harry looked him in the eyes, unflinching, as he dug the wood in harder. "What are you going to do?" she asked, her voice fluttering in a mocking falsetto. "Make me vomit slugs? Turn me pink? Is the Malfoy heir going to go dark? Is the evil dark wizard going to make my blood boil in my veins?"

"Unhand me," Draco demanded, his control back and his voice unwavering.

"Oh, but I can heal your hand," Harry offered with her warmest smile, finally backing away. "Seal all my dirty blood right into your veins. Or would you rather get some little first year to suck my blood out like the venom you consider it?"

"The latter," he hissed, his wand trained on her face.

Harry shrugged, bouncing slightly on her heels. "Wasn't this fun? You asked me to teach you, and we got to do a little practical lesson. My blood is the same color as yours, and now yours is dirty too." She winked. "Why don't you come back to our next lesson with a three page paper on how my blood makes you sick? Any good class has homework."

"You're not a professor," Draco spat. "You're unhinged."

"Yes, I am, but not because I'm a halfblood." She put her knife away and asked, "Same time next week?"

"Fuck you," Draco said. He examined her, his jaw clenched, and then shook his head and walked away.

Harry watched him go, biting her lip so hard she felt blood.

"That was too far," Pansy said reprovingly. Harry startled. She had almost forgotten Pansy was there. She wiped any expression off her face hastily, although she knew that Pansy had been cataloging every detail of her every minute they were together.

"Was it?" Harry responded, her voice neutral.

"To injure someone against their will, to nullify their bodily integrity, is not well done. I know you think we are awful, and you are the good guy, but that little scene didn't give you the moral high ground."

Harry turned away from Pansy's firm gaze, glancing at the blood dripping from her palm onto the dirt. Some of it, she knew, was Draco's. Harry's stomach twisted. "You are right. I let my emotions overcome me. Please convey my apologies to Mr. Malfoy."

"He does care about Rigel," Pansy said quietly. "You didn't see him this summer. His father and Lord Riddle...they didn't really believe we didn't know. It was…unpleasant. And Draco had his own emotions to wrestle with."

Harry's familiar old friend, guilt, came waltzing in. She asked, "And you?"

Pansy snorted. "I was a watering pot all summer. The crying was out of my control, but it was also a wonderful defense. I think Lord Riddle worries that any weeping girl is on her monthlies, and it repulses him. For a Lord of his stature, he has something of a blind spot where teenage girls are concerned."

"He does," Harry agreed with the slightest smirk. "He wouldn't see a teenage girl clearly if she was standing right in front of him."

Pansy tilted her head quizzically, and Harry chided herself. That comment had been a little bit too close to the truth. Harry put her hands in her shorts pockets and said, "I would say this conversation has been a pleasure, but I'm not sure it has been. An experience, certainly."

Pansy examined her and then nodded. "Most illuminating."

Harry started to turn, and Pansy exclaimed, "Wait!"

Harry turned around and glanced quizzically at Pansy's outstretched hand. She hesitantly reached out to shake it, and Pansy shook her head. Rolling her eyes slightly, Pansy said, "Aren't you going to cut me?"

Harry froze. "As you said, it was ill done."

"It was ill done because you did not ask for permission. But I am willing to share your blood. I am curious."

"It will hurt," Harry said.

Pansy winked. "That's why Draco needed a warning—he's never had a monthly. Men are rather pathetic about pain because they've never had to sit there and smile at an inane idiot's babbling conversation while blood flows out of their most intimate areas."

Harry snorted. "To be fair, I haven't had that experience either. When I'm on my monthlies, my family steers clear. I'm always on the verge of biting their heads off. If you can smile at fools through the cramps, you are the better woman."

Pansy smiled serenely. "I wouldn't be surprised. I'm almost always the better woman, regardless of the context."

"You are indeed formidable," Harry said, her eyes narrowing at Pansy's bland expression. Harry grinned and carefully took Pansy's delicate hand, drawing a line across her palm with the knife. Pansy barely flinched. Harry clasped her own still bleeding hand to Pansy's and held them together for a long moment. She finally let Pansy go. "I can heal it," Harry offered.

"No," Pansy said, examining her hand thoughtfully under the sun. "I'll let it heal the muggle way. As I said, I'm curious." Pansy met Harry's eyes firmly and waved her bleeding hand. "Consider this a gesture of good faith."

Harry nodded slowly. After a long second, she said hesitantly, "I don't actually know how to teach you what you want to know. Perhaps I need to think through it, and we can start again. I can recommend some books if you'd like? On magical theory?" She paused. "I shall have to obtain them for you. Some of them are restricted in Britain and will have to be ordered from America."

Pansy smirked. "Smuggling in banned books? You really do have zero compunctions about breaking the law."

Harry snorted. "I was raised by James Potter and Sirius Black, which meant I was raised to believe that rules are meant to be broken. From there, it's only a teensy little step to breaking laws."

"Your parents must have spent much of this summer questioning their parenting choices."

"They have only themselves to blame for how I turned out," Harry said with a shrug. As her shoulders dropped, she relaxed her entire body. During the altercation with Draco, she had stiffened into Rigel's posture instinctively.

"Terrifyingly powerful?"

"I was going to say reckless, but that works too."

Pansy smiled. "You seem to have decided that false modesty does not suit you. I admire your complete commitment to avoiding any hint of humility."

"Now that was a dig," Harry said, a laugh bubbling up. "An arrow through my heart."

Pansy looked at Harry. Pansy's face had only gotten sharper, and in the few months since Harry had last seen her, her eyes seemed to have aged years. She said quietly, "I would wager a great deal that your heart is well shielded."

Harry opened her mouth and then closed it, shifting.

Pansy stepped closer, studying Harry, who shifted under her gaze. "I have not forgotten our dance, you know, Miss Potter. I have always found you interesting, and you have only grown more intriguing in the past few weeks. I shall enjoy learning from you, if only for what I learn about you."

Harry winced. That wasn't good. "There's really nothing to me. I say what I think, and I do what I want."

"Nobody does precisely what they want. Not because of external limitations, but because our desires are always contradicting each other. It's human nature." Pansy bit her lip. "Draco is learning that the hard way right now." With one last piercing gaze at Harry, Pansy said, "Let me know when you obtain the books. I will read them. Draco will too."

"Will he?" Harry asked, tilting her head.

"He will. And we shall come to you to discuss. Draco will need some time to sulk, but he will return. He has a very determined heart, and he is deeply loyal." Pansy held her palm out and examined it. She observed, "It barely hurts any longer. So far, your blood has done me no ill." Harry gazed at Pansy, not reacting. Pansy nodded decisively. "Good day, Miss Potter."

"Miss Parkinson," Harry responded, at the last second catching her bow and curtseying instead. In her itty bitty sports shorts, her still unfamiliar curtsy was little more than a squat. Pansy's curtsy was far more graceful, as was her loping gate as she ran away from Harry and back towards the castle.

The early morning glimmer of the sun had risen into a warm golden light. It gilded Pansy's hair as she climbed up the hill. Harry's gaze swept over the still waters of the lake and continued, piercing the basilisk green shadows of the Forbidden Forest. She turned back towards the castle. The sun had turned the hundreds of windows into droplets of liquid gold dotting the grey stone. The windows hid the hundreds of students who would be dragging themselves out of bed and reaching for their wands at that very moment, unaware of the knife's edge Harry had just walked. Harry's eyes wandered over the elaborate cornices and the gargoyles that peeked out of stone corners. She drank the castle in. Pansy was the only thing moving in the landscape as she approached the castle doors. As Harry watched, Draco emerged from the shadows around the staircase. He had waited for Pansy. He offered her his arm, and together they walked out of the sun.

* * *

Harry stared at the spread of pigments and powders covering the sink. She had a veritable rainbow of shades covering the marble.

"Who am I today?" Harry asked the mirror, examining her skin. She had just stepped out of the shower, and it still glistened, a patient canvas waiting for several layers of goop. "Is today the day I go full vampire? Do a cat-eye that would overwhelm even Irina?" She crinkled her nose. As appealing as the idea decidedly was not, it was also a thoroughly bad idea. People had really taken the whole Rigel-got-Avada'd-and-didn't-die-and-therefor-is-undead thing a bit too far. There was something of a vampire craze going on—one alley entrepreneur was doing brisk business selling garlic perfume to the rich—and Harry did not intend to get caught up in that literally bloody mess. Although Harry thought she'd make a really hot vampire with this face. She'd better not bring Kasten any more kneazles, or Count Aurel might actually believe she was trying to court his grandson—and worse, Kasten might be into it. Harry started to imagine being flooded with love letters written with moonglass ink on aged vellum. The idea was faintly appealing, just for the possibility of comedy it provided. She could leave a letter out for James to find and watch him have an aneurysm. If Leo and Callum freaked him out, how would he react to a vampire?

"Don't worry, Daddy," Harry could say while James spluttered. "I know you think boys only want me for my body, but Kasten's not immature like the other boys. He's so much older and more mature—he doesn't want my body, he wants my blood."

Harry grinned into the dorm mirror and then caught herself. "Focus. Makeup," she muttered. She reached for the skin cream and sank into the meditative state she'd found was possible while applying. She'd never considered herself an artist and had hated makeup when Rispah tried to teach her with a literal wand to the head. But Leo, snoozing in the corner of the room, had popped his head up and told Harry to think about it like freebrewing. Leo told her to focus on creating a stable base, and then throw things on top that worked together.

When Harry had asked him where his makeup expertise came from, Leo had winked and said, "I'm a master of disguise and wearer of all hats. I could teach Rispah a thing or two about contouring." And then, grabbing a brush, he had proceeded to do precisely that. Leo really knows his angles.

Harry applied Leo's contouring tips with aplomb, and in another five minutes, had her armor fully donned and ready for battle—specifically, another day at Hogwarts.

As Harry emerged from the bathroom, her roommate Morag lifted her head from her magazine and asked, "Where were you earlier this morning?" 

Morag's curly auburn hair was wrapped up in a towel, and she grimaced and fixed it as the towel slid to the left with her sharp movement. Morag Macdougall was the first person who had spoken to Harry when she sat down at the Ravenclaw table after the sorting. Harry had remembered her as a former Arithmancy classmate, one very good at the larger economic concepts that had sometimes bored Harry.

Morag had spent a week observing Harry and then started inviting her to eat together and sit together in class. Morag's best friend, Arabella, had taken longer to warm up but was now polite whenever she spoke to Harry. She clearly took Morag's lead, but unusually, she wasn't there with her friend.

Morag noticed Harry glancing around and immediately guessed what she was thinking. "The others went down to breakfast already, and Arabella went with them. I thought you might want somebody to wait for you, and my hair was still drying."

Harry nodded her thanks. "I have a good frizz reducing cream if you'd like? It works on all hair types."

"I usually use Lady Luscious Locks, if that's what you're talking about," Morag said. "What else is there?

The wizarding cosmetics and hair industry was dominated by Lady Luscious, to the extent that some apothecaries and clothiers sold nothing else. "No," Harry said, crinkling her nose. "Some of the ingredients have serious drying out properties, but nobody realizes because the short term effects are good enough. In the long term, Lady Luscious does more harm than good. I have something better." She tossed Morag a clear, unlabeled bottle. Morag laughed, examining it closely and holding it up to the light and then looking at the cork. Harry nodded approvingly. Morag was no potions mistress, but she knew how to judge a potion. "It isn't poisoned," Harry said.

"No label? Do you even know what's in this?"

"I made it," Harry said, using her wand to curl her hair. "I can give you the ingredient list if you like, but I promise it's better than Lady Luscious."

Morag's eyebrows shot up. She put a small amount on her fingers and ran it through her damp hair. It immediately looked shinier, and Morag's eyebrows shot up even higher. "Impressive. I'd heard you're an inventor, but I didn't realize you were doing hair products. I've only heard about your wards."

"Just color-changing potions for hair and a few other small things," Harry said. "I can brew most hair and cosmetic products, but I haven't invented that many."

"What about skincare? Nail polishes? What sorts of cosmetics?" Morag asked, each question slightly louder than the previous.

Harry put her hands up defensively. "No, no, and I honestly can't remember off the top of my head."

"When you have a chance, can you show me the other creations?"

"Yes, of course. Are you unhappy with your current makeup?"

Morag raised a hand, made a so-so motion, and then got off her bed and started putting on her shoes. They had a thick heel and pointed toe, more dramatic even than Harry's. "I'm not so much unhappy with my makeup as I am…intrigued… by the personal care market. Monopolies need competition, and the personal care market is ripe for new blood."

Harry glanced at Morag sidelong when she said blood. Was that intended literally? But no, Harry realized, the girl wasn't talking about blood purity. Morag frowned into space for a long moment, thoughts clearly flowing. She fell into step with Harry as they exited the room and asked, "What funding round are you at? And have you licensed the recipes?"

"I haven't licensed them, no," Harry said. "I sold some of them at a fair once, but that's about it. I've only recently started tinkering with the recipes, and frankly, they are sort of boring to make."

"Are they difficult to produce?" Morag asked, twirling a lock of hair on one finger.

Harry paused, considering it. Not all of the potions she had made for the fair required shaped imbuing. "Not particularly, no."

"In that case, the production could be rapidly expanded and easily outsourced."

Harry stopped. "Why do you ask? I can give you some of the hair potion if you want."

"I don't want a bottle of hair potion. I want a business partner," Morag said, looking at Harry carefully. "I've been thinking about the openings in the industry for a long time, but invention is not my strong suit. And then you fall right into my lap." She grinned. "What do you say?"

"To what?" Harry asked, her brow furrowed.

"You provide the recipes. I help you with the ideas for new ones—I know a great deal about cosmetics—and I do the entire business side. I'll arrange licensing, deal with public relations, advertising, set up investing rounds, etc. All you need to do is brew. We split profits 50-50."

"Morag, no, I—"

"Fine, we'll split sixty-forty. But I won't go lower than that. You will have the easier part, whether or not you're the inventor."

Harry shook her head, glancing at the stream of students who moved past them towards breakfast, looking curiously at the two girls stopped in the center of the corridor. "This is all too fast. I don't want a company. I'm just a brewer."

"Exactly," Morag said, her eyes gleaming. "And I'm a businesswoman. My family is old but dirt poor. What little money I can invest, I invest well, and I've made a tidy profit. I've studied business, and I've studied popular culture. I know what will sell and how to turn a product into a business. This is my specialty."

"I barely even know you," Harry said, shrugging. "This is all just a bit too soon. I have other things to focus on."

"You mean like scaring the shit out of people? Making them terrified of halfbloods?" Morag asked skeptically. "Sure, it's effective in the short term at getting people off your back. But I'm offering you something nobody else is. Good PR."

"I have good PR," Harry said defensively. "I was in the news for volunteer potion-brewing this summer."

"And today, you're in the news for almost killing a quarter of the school."

"Nobody was in danger for a second!"

Morag smirked. "Really? Because according to Rita Skeeter, a third-year died after he fell off the table and landed on his own fork. And Skeeter wrote that the entirety of Slytherin house spent yesterday night in the hospital wing being treated for altitude sickness."

"Altitude sickness?" Harry yelped. "From fifteen feet?"

Morag pulled a Daily Prophet out of her bag. The cover was a photo of Harry on top of the table, her arms raised like a druid in the middle of a pagan ritual. Her mouth opened and closed as she shouted. Her legs looked incredible, Harry noticed with the slightest smirk. But she seemed rather terrifying.

"Who took that?" Harry asked, snatching the paper out of Morag's hands.

"I don't know, but if I were your business partner, I could find out," Morag said, eyeing Harry slyly. "I'm very tapped into the social network in this school. And I organize the Hogwarts black market—"

"The what?" Harry asked, her gaze snapping up from the Daily Prophet. Morag's freckled face suddenly looked far less innocent.

"You know—cigarettes, firewhiskey, fur-lined handcuffs, marijuana."

"Fur-lined handcuffs?" Harry asked, trying to picture them. "Why—"

Morag's eyebrows shot up. "Sex?" When Harry looked even more confused, Morag snorted. "Asking me to explain fuzzy handcuffs makes you far less alarming." She gave Harry a once-over. "Isn't your whole angle like, scary sexy? Because I think that image might fall apart if people start asking you more questions."

Harry pursed her lips. Image or not, she had a feeling she did not need to know any more about furry handcuffs. "The black market?" she prompted.

Morag paused, lifting her chin defensively. "I don't sell hard drugs. And if students buy too much alcohol too often, I cut them off. I won't be responsible for ruining people's lives. I'm careful. But I provide a service, and I make a profit. And people will often pay in secrets or favors. I'm a useful person to have on your side, Harry. And this will be a long year. You need people on your side."

"What's in it for you?"

"Two things: first, my cousins are all halfbloods, and my childhood best friend is a squib. I don't want you to fuck up this chance and ruin things for them. I'm already on your side," she said. Harry's chest tightened. She hated feeling responsible for other people's lives. She hadn't asked to be some sort of representative or test case of whether non-purebloods deserved a future. Morag continued, "And more importantly, I'm a businesswoman without a business. You, it seems, are the business partner I've been dreaming of."

They reached the great hall, and Harry didn't say anything as they crossed to their customary seats at the Ravenclaw table. She noticed the hall go abruptly quiet and then start to buzz again as she walked in. Her face remained calm, but internally she tensed. She said to Morag absently, "I don't know."

Morag side-eyed her as they sat down. "You heard that silence. You've succeeded at impressing people, but at a cost. They're scared because they don't know what to do with you. They don't know what you want."

"I want to be a potions mistress."

"A reclusive, mysterious profession populated by the gloomiest of glooms," Morag said, wiggling her eyebrows dramatically. "And you can still be one. But in the short term, you can become the premiere personal care product inventor in Britain. You can make a fortune, and you can redirect the press. Innocent, makeup and hair-loving Harriett Potter goes on a mission to bring self-love to the people of Wizarding Britain and help them bring out their inner beauty. That Harry is the halfblood they want."

Harry instinctively glanced to the Gryffindor table where Fred and George were. Perhaps she did need PR help, but she wanted it from them. Harry exhaled. Morag was right, but Harry barely knew her. "Can I think about it?"

"Yes," Morag said. "But I'm going to assume the answer is a yes, and start planning. All you have to do is provide me with one batch and the recipe for four excellent products, and then you will be done for the first few months while I build the company. If the rumors of your skills are true, that will take you no time at all."

Harry saw the determination in Morag's perfectly made-up eyes and nodded. "You do what you need to do. I'll do the same. I'll let you know what I decide."

A hesitant hand tapped her on the shoulder, and Harry turned to accept a note from a Hufflepuff first year. She opened it to find Snape's spindly handwriting.

_Miss Potter,_

_You will assist me in my brewing tomorrow after classes end. 4 pm. Leave the theatrics in your dorm._

_\- Professor Snape_

Harry laughed under her breath and tucked the note away. Finally, hopefully, some real brewing after the drudgery of their first few sessions. Based on the timing, there would almost certainly be some sort of lecture first, but there had to be some brewing at the end. She supposed she deserved a lecture. Professor Flitwick had pulled her aside after dinner to give her a month's detentions, but he had seemed too nonplussed to do more than announce the punishment. Harry stretched with the satisfaction of a cat, glancing around, and caught the eye of a third-year Puff. His eyes widened as he stared at her with undisguised nerves and then jerked away. She sighed. Perhaps she had gone a bit overboard the day before. "Morag?" Harry asked.

"Mmmph," Morag said through a mouthful of waffles.

"I'll do it. When we officially announce the beginning, let's do it with a friendly interview and a photo shoot. Harry Potter can be frontline news for something innocent, for once."

"I wouldn't say entirely innocent," Morag said, a wolfish grin emerging. "I'm about to eviscerate Lady Luscious like the Huns eviscerated Rome. I'm going to pillage them for their profits and burn their headquarters to the ground." There was a long pause, and Morag added, "Metaphorically."

Harry responded faintly, "How nice."

Morag's grin stretched so far across her face, Harry was surprised it didn't actually touch her ears.

Harry looked at her. "I may have understated the number of potions I've already made for sale. A freckle remover. Some glamours. A variety, and they sold exceptionally well when I tried them this summer. I have some samples I can give you today, even."

"I have a cousin who is a solicitor. If your potions work, I'll get him to send over a contract as soon as possible. You will want to run it by your own solicitor."

Harry thought about Percy and wondered how he would react to a letter from Harriett Potter. He'd never actually met her, but she was willing to bet he would read a contract as a favor to a fellow member of the Light. Was it a good idea to get involved with the Weasleys again? Definitely not. Harry nodded slowly and said, "Very well. How soon can we announce the company?"

"As soon as the contracts are signed," Morag said. "And then we'll have a lovely photoshoot, and you will fit right into the box all the frightened idiots want to put you in."

"I don't fit in any box," Harry said, her mouth a thin line.

"Nor should you," Morag said with a shrug. "But when people see what they are looking for, they don't see anything else. I've found that to be true in all of my entrepreneurial pursuits."

That was undoubtedly accurate. People were just so blind sometimes. But it seemed that Morag, at least, saw clearly. Harry turned and offered the girl her hand. Morag had a firm handshake and a glitter in her eyes that Harry liked. "I look forward to doing business with you."

Harry turned and looked down the table, populated at that hour by a group of fourth-years engaged in an impassioned shouting match about the flawed historical analyses of the relationship between wand legislation and the Goblin Rebellions. Surrounding them, at least ten students were reading books over their breakfasts. And next to her, Morag was already scribbling notes for her corporate takeover of the personal care industry. Ravenclaw wasn't Slytherin. But perhaps that was one of its charms.

* * *

Harry snagged an armchair by the window after classes and snuggled in. It had been a very long day of intense looks. Some were bright smiles, others admiration, and plenty of them were wide-eyed glances of fear or hate. And the Weasleys had just stared at her with unreadable gazes, as if all four Weasleys at Hogwarts were engaged in an experiment and she was the unwilling specimen. It was a relief to be back in the Ravenclaw common room, tucked away in a very large armchair.

The whole sit-comfortably-so-you-don't-look-like-Rigel thing was starting to get normal, and Harry realized she liked it. In a shocking turn of events, it turned out that people lounged because it was enjoyable. Harry frowned. Soon, she'd find herself wearing fuschia fuzzy socks and using hot water bottles, and at that point, she could just give up on life entirely. What kind of self-respecting potions mistress snuggled? She briefly considered taking up self-flagellation or wearing a hair shirt like the ancient muggle monks just to keep herself tough. Harry sighed loudly and summoned a soft woolen blanket to swaddle herself in. It was disgustingly cozy. _What have I become,_ she asked herself with a sigh as she moodily peered out over the Scottish mountains.

"Your wrackspurt fled," a dreamy voice piped up next to her. "They don't like when people use flannel blankets. Too cozy."

Harry jumped. She hadn't even noticed Luna, who peered around the heavy curtain with wide blue eyes and a mass of blond hair that seemed to float in its own wind. Harry had barely spoken to her at Dumbledore's Soiree, but in the minute she had, the girl had seemed exceptionally odd. "What are wrackspurts?" Harry asked hesitantly, unsure if she wanted to know.

"They're not very friendly," Luna said after a strangely long pause. "They're drawn to people who are uncomfortable and gloomy. But most of yours seem to have fled for good."

"I'm too comfortable for even the wrackspurts," Harry whispered, horrified. Never mind that she didn't believe in wrackspurts. This was a problem. Comfort led to carelessness, which led to Azkaban. Harry kicked her blanket to the floor and looked at Luna. Maybe the girl would tell her if the wrackspurt came back.

"Would you like some socks?" Luna asked, a pair of warm woolen socks festooned with knit turnips appearing out of the curtain. "The lifflemuffs will nest in your toes if you aren't careful. They like the cold."

"No," Harry yelped. "I don't want your comfortable socks. I like cold toes, and I eat lifflemuffs for breakfast."

Luna looked at her askance. "That's not very nice. Lifflemuffs are friendly."

"Lifflemuffs are rude and deserve to be eaten," Harry said defensively. Then Harry stopped. What was she even saying? Harry decided it was time to retreat, and she shifted in her chair as she prepared to stand. "I don't want to disturb you."

"You don't disturb me," Luna murmured. "Now that your wrackspurts are gone, you have a very turquoise energy."

"No, I don't," Harry said, disagreeing with the wispy blond girl reflexively. "My energy is very stormy and dark. Like Snape's."

"It was gloomier before," Luna observed. "Last year, you were so flooded with wrackspurts that it was hard to see the Slytherins around you."

Harry froze, her head slowly turning to face Luna. She said quietly, "We've never met before today." Harry added, "I don't even know your name."

Luna blinked. "Your last wrackspurt is back." She rifled in her bag and then slowly held out a pair of radish earrings. "These will help." She peered dreamily out the window and murmured, "I don't think the other wrackspurts recognize your new face."

"Luna," Harry said, her face slipping into Rigel's straight visage as she looked over her shoulder. The common room was full of children studying, and none seemed to be paying attention. "When you say new face do you mean all the makeup I started wearing?"

Luna emerged from behind the curtain and gracefully slipped off the window seat entirely. "Do you see that? I think there's a jimblebwap up by that window," she said. She pointed across the room and started to glide away.

Harry grabbed her arm, stopping her, and hissed, "Luna, this is my face. I've never had any other."

"You remembered my name," Luna said, smiling. "Sometimes wrackspurts make you forget things. Do you forget your other face too?"

"I—"Harry stopped. "I think you are mixed up. But you can't say anything to anybody else." She grabbed Luna's arm. "You can't repeat that to anybody else."

Luna glanced away from the empty spot across the room. She observed Harry for a long second, and a sudden clarity entered her eyes. She said calmly, "Nobody listens to me."

"But—"

"It's the ripplezooms. They plug up everyone else's ears," Luna said wisely. "I told everyone to drink prune juice, but the ripplezooms blocked the sound. This whole castle is stuffed with ripplezooms. Nobody can hear me." Harry's brow furrowed. That was uncomfortably depressing nonsense. Luna didn't seem to notice Harry's expression softening. She waved her hand around and murmured, "I like your real face better. It's scaring away the wrackspurts. When they've been gone for a while, you'll feel much better. There's nothing that scares a wrackspurt like being yourself."

Harry snorted. "Have you ever considered writing a self-help book? A guide to repelling wrackspurts with a ten-step journey towards self-love?"

"Oh yes," Luna said, nodding. "Daddy publishes lots about wrackspurts. But self-love is ten twirls away, not ten steps." She smiled, blinking slowly. "I have to go now. The jimblebwap is moving, and I don't want it to escape."

"Merlin forbid the jimblebwap get away," Harry muttered.

"Exactly," Luna nodded. "They carry messages from the Goddess. I'll let you know if the message is for you." She swanned away, leaving Harry staring after her. After a long moment, Harry looked up and hesitantly batted the air above her head. Luna knew far too much for Harry to ignore her or ignore what she said. Which meant, apparently, Harry now had to be wary of wrackspurts. Harry collapsed into her chair and buried her head in her hands. Luna knew she was Rigel. Harry sighed, a wave of gloom sweeping over her like a tsunami. She glanced up at the empty air above her and muttered, "Welcome back, guys."

* * *

The hallway outside Professor Snape's lab was empty of students, and Harry sagged back against the wall and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply as if trying to pull the dust and deep of the dungeons inside of herself. Something was unnerving about her new life in the sky.

"Napping, Miss Potter?" Professor Snape drawled. Harry snapped her eyes open and watched as he unlocked the door, saying, "A tired brewer is a dangerous one. Need we to reschedule?"

Harry's lip twitched. His sincerely insincere concern for her exhaustion was so familiar. "Never, Professor. I look forward to these sessions with bated breath and would never dream of missing a second of your endless wisdom."

Professor Snape's nostrils flared. "You are as lacking in wisdom as you are in respect."

Harry shrugged. "My lack of wisdom is, in a sense, why I am here. What are we doing today? Am I proving to you that I do, in fact, know how to scrub a cauldron? Am I to demonstrate that I can use a rod to mix two ingredients?"

"You chafe at my demands?" Professor Snape asked, his eyebrows slamming together. Harry winced internally but didn't let him see her reaction. Angering him wasn't the best choice, but it differentiated her from Rigel. And doing remedial potions under his hawk-eyed gaze truly chafed. He continued, "Neither you nor Rigel have given me any reason to trust you. I can trust neither your abilities nor, it seems, your self-control." He loomed over her. "What exactly were you thinking during that ludicrous, reckless display of pique?"

Harry snorted. "You were the one who first warned me of the reception that I would receive. And you were correct in your assumptions. What was I supposed to do?" She stared at him and then turned away, pacing with an enthusiasm Rigel would never have displayed. "Sit there and wait for someone to stun me in the back? My reflexes are good, but they aren't perfect." She hissed, "Eventually, something would land. And besides that, why should I tolerate them? What reason do I have? You were a halfblood at Hogwarts—you can't have enjoyed your time. And blood discrimination wasn't even as entrenched then as it is now!"

Snape watched her thoughtfully. "Ignoring your wild teenage emotions, how did your reflexes get as good as you claim? Your power, I understand—your mother is exceptionally powerful. But your reflexes and your wandless magic are less explicable."

Harry snorted. "What do you think I was doing while Rigel was Archie and Archie was me?"

"That is a question I continue to ask myself," Professor Snape said. His eyes were shadowed in the dim laboratory lighting as he surveyed her from under lowered eyelids. "Brewing for a second-rate apothecary and taking a simplistic correspondence course is an odd choice. You do not strike me as uniquely altruistic, so why, exactly, did you give up your life to fulfill your cousin's dreams?"

Harry met his eyes and smiled. "For freedom. The freedom to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I was able to experiment with no oversight, to spend time with people my parents would have disapproved of. I lived on the edge, as a lone girl in the Lower Alleys, and I developed the reflexes I needed. I can pick locks and pockets and throw card games, and I know the best ten places to stab someone. My life was an education that Hogwarts could never have provided. And it was free of the bigotry this place breeds. Why should I live in this world and play by its rules when its rules are determined to chain me? Why not live in a world that doesn't care who I am?"

Snape's nostrils flared again. "And tell me, Miss Potter," he said sardonically, "Was your freedom everything you hoped it would be?"

"Nothing is ever everything one hopes it will be. But it wasn't boring."

"You have as a great a love of drama as Rita Skeeter and are equally as willing to tell untruths," Professor Snape hissed. "I am aware you know more about Rigel than you claim. I am aware that there is a great deal you are not telling me."

"I'm aware that the apprentice you care about is the boy formerly known as Rigel, not me. I'm the one you got shoved into. So make your assumptions about my character and my motivations," Harry said, shrugging. Professor Snape's frown deepened as she continued, "You are good at assumptions." She laughed bitterly, placing her potions bag on the table and settling herself on a stool. Somehow, in this persona, all she did was provoke anybody she spoke to. It hadn't been what Archie intended, but the words just kept spilling out. It was as if the minute she burst the dam, she found that there was more water than she had expected. Harry wasn't sure where it was all coming from—she hadn't realized her reserves of resentment had even existed, let alone went so deep. Harry didn't believe she was actually different than who she had been before. People don't change that much, even when their world changes around them. So had she just never seen herself clearly at all? She bit her lip, her eyes fixed on Professor Snape.

Professor Snape folded his arms. "Good at assumptions? Would you care to clarify the meaning of those words, Miss Potter?"

Harry lounged against the table, leaning on both elbows and pasting on her trademarked smile. "Adults all see what they want to see. You wanted to believe that Sirius was a bad parent because you hate him so much. And that's what you don't get. Whatever you think of my parents, of my father and my uncle, they are loving and deeply care about us. All they want is to be good parents. But you seized on the slightest hint that Sirius was a bad parent, and you ran with it rather than checking." She watched Snape, his face going pale and his lips thinning into a white line. "If you had spoken to Sirius for even five minutes—mentioned any one of Rigel's oddities—his magic being an easy one—you both would have realized something was up. You were the only one at Hogwarts close enough to realize the ruse, and you would have if your hatred hadn't blinded you. But you wanted to believe that Rigel didn't trust his father, that Sirius was oblivious and bad and forced Rigel to be someone he wasn't. And, I'll admit, our ruse made our parents seem pretty darn oblivious. But despite our lies and betrayals, we know they would die for us in a heartbeat, and they would never tell us who we should be or how we should behave. You were having too much fun looking down on him to match his pieces of information with yours. If you could have said five civil words to him or my father or my mother, the entire house of cards would have fallen apart."

"That's enough, Miss Potter," Professor Snape said quietly. His hands were white-knuckled. "I am well aware of my blindness. And you, it seems, quite enjoy bragging about how you tricked everyone and how you are better. Yesterday, certainly, you bragged enough for a lifetime. And endangered my students while doing it. You are as arrogant as your father."

"No," Harry exclaimed, jumping to her feet. He was wrong about her father. James was flawed, and Harry was well aware of that, but he had grown since Hogwarts. And even if Professor Snape hadn't been wrong about James, Harry was her own person. "I am arrogant in a different way than my father. I am arrogant because I have no other choice. I have to be twice as good to get half the respect. And I didn't endanger your students!" She flicked her hand, and every single table and chair in the lab floated towards the ceiling. "I can do this for hours. I know what I can do, and I do what I intend to. Because I don't have another choice. The rest of the students in this school can make mistakes, but I don't have that luxury."

"Don't come whining to me when the world demands perfection, Miss Potter," Snape said, his eyes narrow. With a wave of his wands, he forced all the tables to the floor. "I struggle to muster any sympathy."

"I'm not asking for your sympathy," Harry said, her lips curled and her voice shaking. "I'm asking you to not make the same mistake with me you made with Rigel. I'm asking you to judge me for myself, not my father." Her hands curled into fists. "I'm asking you to be on my side. Even if I'm the wrong potions prodigy! Even if I'm not Rigel!" She exclaimed, "I can't be Rigel for you! Rigel doesn't exist!"

The anger that had been lining Professor Snape's face drained away, and he stared at her with a furrowed brow, every muscle frozen. In a glacially slow voice, he asked, "What do you mean he doesn't exist?"

Harry started, her eyes widening, and her mouth clamped shut. She relaxed her face immediately, trying to cover her consternation, but she knew Snape had registered her discomfort. She said, "Merely that the boy you knew as Rigel is somebody else. With a different name and face. The Rigel you knew doesn't exist."

"But the boy exists."

"Of course!" Harry exclaimed. Her voice was too loud, echoing around the room. She lowered it and said, "He didn't die in the tournament. He _exists_."

Snape was still looking at her oddly, and her heart pounded. The explanation made sense, and she knew it did. She also knew that Professor Snape had an uncanny ability to catch untruths. The ruse had only worked because he hadn't been looking for them. And she knew he was looking now.

The moment stretched uncomfortably, and then Professor Snape exhaled lowly. "I am aware you are not Rigel. And I am aware you have your own value. I apologize for bringing your father into it. I will not pretend that I do not consider him a witless baboon with the sense of facile humor of a blast-ended skrewt, but I will not judge you by him." He paused. "I am on your side, Miss Potter."

Harry deflated. She doubted he would be on her side if he knew the whole truth. It made his apology all the more painful. "I don't actually like to be arrogant," she offered, finally. "Or to brag." She paused. "Mr. Malfoy—Draco Malfoy—came to my uncle's birthday party a summer ago. He offered advice. He told me that I should not be self-deprecating or undervalue myself because others would automatically undervalue me for my blood. I don't think he meant I should lift up the entire Slytherin house in the middle of the Great Hall to prove I have power, but I did take those words to heart."

Professor Snape nodded. "His words had merit. Unusually wise for him," he added with a ghost of a fond smile. "I will not pretend that I view your stunt as anything more than an idiotic demonstration of the risks of allowing self-aggrandizing teenagers leeway." He looked down at her. "But I understand your motivations. That being said, do anything of the sort again, and I will confiscate your wand and abandon you at a Muggle opera house with a jester hat so that you can seek applause in a venue more befitting of your nonsense. I will not have any apprentice of mine demonstrating such a lack of judgment and recklessness while associated with my name."

"Should I buy a jester costume to make it easier for you to get rid of me?"

"You should learn some moderation," Professor Snape said quellingly. "You have proved your point to the general public. Now prove to me that you can properly brew the Draught of Living Death."

Harry grinned. Finally, some real brewing—a brew she knew like the back of her hand, but at least one that was complicated enough to require her attention. And any brew was better than continuing that conversation. Harry was sweating slightly, she realized. "Yes, Sir," Harry said, and turned to set up her station.

She threw herself into the potion, aware the entire time of Professor Snape's eyes, observing her every move. He was expressionless, and she shifted slightly under his gaze. As she chopped the valerian sprigs, she carefully separated the ends of the roots and put them in a discard pile. Professor Snape's eyes followed her hands, glancing over the bracelets that jingled as she moved. Harry wished he would look away—his single-minded focus was unnerving. But he never averted his gaze, his lips pursed thoughtfully as Harry proved to him she could brew with the best of them.

"Miss Potter, wait," he said as she packed her bag, his face blank.

She paused. "Sir?"

He tossed her another one of the valerian sprigs she had been using. "Chop this."

Harry cocked her head instinctively, not speaking, and his mouth gaped open slightly. "Chop it," Professor Snape commanded again.

She hesitantly pulled a knife back out of her bag and moved to the table. She didn't like the look in his eyes. Her hands were tense. It was some sort of test. She carefully chopped the root, making sure that each slice was perfectly even. Was he curious about her knife skills? As she chopped, she discarded the ends and turned to display the perfect squares.

Professor Snape reached forward with an achingly slow motion, picking up one of the discarded ends.

"You changed the way you chop roots. Why?"

"No, I haven't," Harry said, smiling at him quizzically. She folded her hands behind her back to hide the way they had started to tremble. "What are you talking about?"

"When we first met, you chopped your roots to the end, using the entirety of the roots. Just as Rigel does. It is an unusual way to chop."

Harry's stomach plummeted, and she stepped backward, almost tripping over her still unfamiliar boots. "I—"

He looked at her like she was a puzzle he was trying to figure out. "And yet now, you do it differently." Each word dropped into the air and floated there, like drumbeats carrying a prisoner towards execution. "I commented on your similar mannerisms at the time, and you told me that it was entirely reasonable that you had similar mannerisms." He stepped forward, his black robes swirling. "Because you and Rigel grew up together."

Harry scrambled for something to say, but she had nothing, no excuse, and her breath caught in her throat.

Snape's words kept coming implacably. "But you claimed to the Aurors that you never even met him. So, where did those mannerisms come from? And why did they disappear?"

"I had to act like him when—"

"Just now, you turned your head as Rigel does. A boy you have _never seen_. You are standing like him at this very second, still, watchful, as if waiting to be attacked." He inhaled, his voice dangerously low. "So I ask, Miss _Potter_ , in your educated opinion as an aspiring potions mistress, what is the superior way to chop a root?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to the various members of the RBC discord who have read and discussed this!! @rae had the original idea for including the head of house meeting, and thank you also to @syrenian who made a really cool fanart of this version of Harry! I love the RBC community!!!
> 
> And thank you so much to all of you who commented on the last chapter, and convinced me to keep going. I love reading your comments and really appreciate all of your thoughts on where this could go!!


	3. Chapter 3

"I—" Harry looked at Professor Snape, and then around the room, and then at her hand, which she now realized was clutching the knife.

Professor Snape noticed her glance and glanced at her hand too. "Put that down," he ordered.

"I'm not going to stab you, Professor," Harry exclaimed, dropping it. She crossed her arms over her chest protectively and eyed him with a frown. "I'm a potions student in a room full of deadly ingredients. If I was about to make a run for it, do you really think a knife is what I would use to slow you down? I could just throw something acidic enough to temporarily blind you. At least then, if the Aurors got me, I'd be arrested for assault and not attempted murder."

Professor Snape straightened and stepped back slightly, his eyelids slipping down to hide his pupils. Whatever rush of emotion had overcome him, he had gotten under control. Harry, observing that, took a second herself to breathe deeply. This was not good, but all she had done was chop a root oddly. She could recover from this.

Professor Snape said drily, "When you first enter a room, do you normally catalog the best ways to cause a distraction and make your escape? An unusual way to live."

Harry snorted. "I'm a Potter."

"Are you?" He asked, the words lashing her like a whip.

"We can do an ancestry potion if you'd like. No skin grafts involved," Harry said. "Yes. But you're right that I lied about something important." She paused, opening and shutting her mouth as she tried to decide how to best move forward. "I have met Rigel. Often. I've spent a lot of time with him. He's not from the UK, and so in the summer and on breaks, when I moved home, he moved into my apartment in the lower alleys. He used the Floo to come and go, so nobody else ever saw him. And we studied together. We both really really like potions—" Harry glanced at Professor Snape and said, "Well, you already know that. I taught him what I learned self-studying, he taught me what he learned with you, and we brewed together. If you'd seen me brew the summer before Hogwarts, I cut roots the way I do now. But then Rigel and I got into an argument about how I was wasting ingredients—" Harry snorted. "—which I paid for with the Potter vault, by the way—and just to shut him up, I started doing it that way when he was around. And I suppose I didn't want to be in Rigel's shadow anymore. I've been pretending to be just like him for so long that I've started avoiding doing the things he taught me or that remind me of him." Harry gazed at the floor mournfully, keeping her eyes away from Snape's as she tried to nail an expression of wistfulness. "I miss him too, and so my brewing is all mixed up right now."

"That's absurd," Professor Snape snapped. Harry winced. "Are you attempting to inform me that you now discard the tips of valerian sprigs to avoid the emotional devastation wrought by the absence of a boy who you've known for three summers?"

Harry looked up at him, her eyes wide. She ever so lightly bit her lip. "I just have so many feelings sometimes. Like, it's all inside me, and I'm overwhelmed, and I want to cry, but I can't. What do you do when you miss someone so much?"

Professor Snape shifted uncomfortably for a second. He had never particularly liked feelings. Then he paused, his eyes narrowing. "You're trying to distract me with...emotions."

"So? I may be trying to distract you," Harry admitted openly, "but I do have feelings, you know."

"And St. Mungo's has many excellent mind-healers on staff," Snape said, waving his hand dismissively. "More importantly, you claim that you spent three summers and winter breaks with Rigel. What is his name? What does he look like?"

"I never saw him without polyjuice or the modified potion," Harry said, shrugging. "He was taking the biggest risk, and he knew it, so Rigel was careful. Archie set the whole thing up, which is why Archie is the one under the sealing curse. It wasn't until we had the potions and things figured out and I had rented the apartment that I met him. He went by Rigel then, too. Less confusing and less opportunity for us to mess up."

"Are you trying to tell me that you spent three months with him every year, but you know nothing? I know you are a liar, but I thought you were not a fool."

Harry opened her mouth for a second and then offered, "He speaks French! I only heard him do it a few times, but sometimes he swore in French or muttered."

"Nice try, but I already knew that," Snape said shortly. "Mr. Malfoy and others have already mentioned his command over the language. Telling me something I already know to avoid telling me something new? A classic evasion."

"That's entirely unfair," Harry protested. "I barely even know Malfoy. How am I supposed to know what he knows about Rigel or what he told you he knows about Rigel?"

Professor Snape turned, striding away from Harry and pacing towards the back of the room. "The boy is not in France! He is not French! I have searched everywhere!"

Harry snorted. "Have you checked Cote d'Ivoire?" Snape paused, whipping around to look at her. Harry started laughing in full. "Martinique? Morocco? French Guiana? That one is easy. It has 'french' in the name." At the murderous face bearing down on her, Harry held up her hands defensively. "Okay, okay, sorry. But the whole 'he speaks French and therefore must from France' thing is just a wee bit eurocentric, don't you think?"

"I think you aim to enrage me," Professor Snape said, his nostrils flaring. "Which is a curious strategy, considering you wish for my assistance in your career pursuits."

Harry's mouth twisted. Her attempts to be unlike Rigel could potentially have a negative impact on her future. She had to reign it in. "Sorry. To be honest, I'm not really sure how to deal with professors at all. I ran away from home to live in a grungy apartment just so I could avoid adults and adult supervision. I'm not really used to speaking respectfully. Or obedience. Or schedules. Or uniforms. Or being polite."

"Lily Potter's daughter was not raised by animals," Professor Snape said, a single eyebrow raised. As a grin stretched across her face at his words, he shook his head irritably. "Do not make the joke you want to make, Miss Potter. You are standing on thinner ice than you realize."

Harry nodded. She ran a hand through her hair, twisting the longest strands around her fingers. "Sorry, Professor." She paused, glancing at the ground and then back up at him, biting her lip so hard it went white. "Rigel's not coming back. But he did…he…you." She frowned and then started again. "You're right that I lived with him and knew him well. If he was going to trust anyone with the truth, it would have been you. He hated lying to you, and I know he wishes he did things differently. If he could do things differently, he would tell you the truth."

Professor Snape's face was unreadable as he watched her. Harry fidgeted, slouching under his gaze even as every instinct screamed at her to straighten. He looked older than he used to, she realized. There were lines she didn't remember etched across the map of his face—lines that hadn't been there only three months earlier. Harry knew what this was doing to him—what she was doing to him—and she hated herself for it. But it was her very soul on the line. She couldn't trust anyone.

Professor Snape repeated, "If he could do things differently, he would tell me the truth?" His eyes focused on Harry. "Are you saying that if the student I knew as Rigel was standing in front of me today, that student would tell me their true identity?"

"If Rigel were here, he would trust you," Harry said slowly, staring at Professor Snape. She didn't know why she was trying to comfort him in such a twisted, uncomfortable way. "He does trust you."

"Really," Professor Snape drawled, his lips pursed with disbelief. "And do you trust me, Miss Potter?"

Harry looked him in the eyes. "Honestly, Professor, I barely know you. I've told you what I know."

"You have not. You are _not_ telling me everything."

"Fine," Harry shouted, throwing up her hands. "The truth is that no matter how much you grill me, you will not find Rigel. I cannot give you information that will bring Rigel Black back. And everything else I know is mine alone." She grabbed her potions bag again, pulling it over her shoulder and moving towards the door. "Can I leave now?"

Professor Snape was a darkened silhouette against the light as she pulled the door open. His voice followed her, low and tense. "You can trust me with the truth, Miss Potter."

"Maybe Rigel could have trusted you," Harry admitted, her voice catching in her throat imperceptibly. Not bothering to entirely shut the door, she said, "But I'm not Rigel, I'm Harry. And you haven't earned Harry's trust."

Harry hurried away, desperate to get away from the oppressive knowledge that she wasn't, could never be, the apprentice that he wanted. That she had to live with and be judged against herself. Harry would spend the next several years working with him, learning from him, and living with the daily reminders of the pain she had caused him. And she had—Harry had caused pain. Somehow, she'd spent far more of the summer reckoning with the pain she had caused her friends. But Professor Snape had always seemed so immune to discomfort, so imperturbable. Seeing him over the summer, in the Potions Guild where she was only Harry, Harry hadn't really realized Professor Snape was different. But here, in the familiar lab, Harry could see the way he was worn at the edges. The way she had worn him down. Would he always be searching for Rigel, while all the while Harry stood right there? She'd made it out without him realizing the truth, but was that something she could truly live with?

Harry stumbled up and up and up and up until she made it to the top of Ravenclaw Tower. Harry glued herself to a window that just barely cracked and gasped for fresh air.

If she hadn't been in such a rush to leave the dungeons, if she hadn't half-sprinted away, her ears might have caught an odd sound escaping the lab through the cracked door. Harry would have heard a chuckle as rusty as an unwashed pewter cauldron. She would have listened to the chuckle grow into the briefest of barking laughs before cutting off into silence. And then, the screech of wood scraping against stone—the sound of a hidden cabinet opening. A thud as a glass bottle of something—firewhiskey, maybe?—slammed onto the table. A hefty swig and audible swallow. A slight cough. Another swig, no cough. She would have heard the sounds of a man who found the person he had been searching for—who he feared for. And he found that person alive, breathing, unharmed. A clink, a gulp, a shuddering exhale—the sounds of a man known for his impeccable self-control getting extremely drunk.

But Harry didn't stay. So she didn't hear Professor Snape's middle-aged, aching knees hit the stone floor. Harry did not hear him whisper names—Bright Mithros, Great Mother, even a muttered call to Kyprioth, the patron god of tricksters and their ruses. Only the gods themselves heard Severus Snape retching into a rubbish bin for the first time in decades. Only they listened to hours of drunken, mumbled prayers of thanks.

As the pink dawn marched towards the sleeping castle, a man kneeled alone in a pool of shadows at the heart of a frigid dungeon. Time left the man in peace as he ceaselessly venerated gods he had long claimed he did not worship.

* * *

Harry wrapped a length of purple ribbon around her ponytail, smeared a berry lip gloss across her lips, and then sat at the edge of the bed to lace up her jet-black boots. Morag and Arabella were in the bathroom still, and the others had already left for breakfast, so Harry didn't bother hiding her movements as she slipped a knife into her thigh holder and disillusioned it, and then put another knife in her boot and two more in the sleeves of her fashionably cut blouse.

Arabella tumbled out of the bathroom, Morag almost shoving her out in excitement. "The freckle cream works," Morag exclaimed, waving a hand over her now-freckle-free nose. "It's so much easier than glamouring them one by one!"

"I like you better with your freckles," Arabella said, glancing up from the small personal mirror she had carried out of the bathroom, "But it is very effective." Arabella was preening too, turning her face from side to side as she examined herself. "I love how this foundation automatically matches your skin tone," Arabella said. Her brown skin was perfectly evened out, and there was no sign she was wearing makeup at all. Arabella grinned. "Lady Luscious has such a limited color range. This is much better. These are going to sell out in a heartbeat."

Morag hugged Arabella from behind. "And you, my dear investor, will get an unlimited supply."

"Investor?" Harry asked, an eyebrow raised. "That was fast."

Morag shrugged. "Rossi is her dad's name, but her mom is a Zabini. Always befriend the loaded roommate."

"She only wants me for my galleons," Arabella sighed dramatically, flopping on the bed. "At least when a fit younger man marries me for my money, he'll give me sex in return. What do you give me, Morag?"

Morag winked. "Endless entertainment, darling. And sex isn't off the table—I recently learned that Harriett's knowledge of kinks is alarmingly limited, and I've always dreamed of a dorm room orgy."

"You couldn't handle me," Arabella said with a sly smile, shimmying out of Morag's hug.

"Zabini?" Harry asked, ignoring the slightly discomfiting exchange. Harry had never dreamed of a dorm room orgy. She had barely considered sex with a single person at a time, let alone a disastrous and chaotic mess of limbs. "I didn't know Blaise had any family at Hogwarts."

"We're more of a clan than a family, and I'm from the Italian branch," Arabella explained. "Blaise and I are friendly, but we didn't spend much time together growing up. And Slytherins are a bit too political for my taste."

"You don't like politics?"

"Not in the slightest," Arabella drawled. "Unless by politics you mean the twisted dynamics of the Minister of Magic's husband's affair with his mother-in-law."

"You're joking," Harry said, gaping.

"I don't joke about scandal," Arabella said. "Morag provides the jokes. I provide the cutting commentary on the fall of society." She paused. "That's why I was on the fence about you, Miss Potter. I'm sure you noticed I wasn't rushing to befriend you. You ooze politics and righteous indignation. Not my scene."

"Because you aren't the one being impacted," Harry said pointedly.

"Yes, exactly," Arabella replied, brushing out her curls. "I'm utterly unashamed of being immoral and unengaged in social inequality. I'm not interested in pamphlets or protests. Will that be a problem?"

Harry stared at her and then tilted her head. "What about political donations? Are you opposed to those? Or do you only donate to a specific party?"

"Oh, of course, I donate. I give to everyone and everything," Arabella said. "I dislike politics, but I do love access."

"How very corrupt of you," Harry said, her lips twitching as she held back a laugh. At face value, Arabella was awful. But there was something strangely inoffensive about how comfortable she was admitting it. Harry had a feeling that along with the apathy about politics came an indifference about blood prejudice—in a strange way, Arabella was probably one of the least discriminatory people in the school. Harry grinned fully. "So if I ran a political campaign with my self-righteous indignation, would you donate to it?"

"She certainly would," Morag said, buttoning up her shirt. "And while other donors would pressure you to do certain things with certain policies, Arabella would just be there pressuring you to break up your opponent's marriage. She's the best kind of corrupt. She's odious, but there's a reason I adore her."

"Odious?" Arabella asked, a single eyebrow raised. "Is that how you talk to your first investor?"

"It is when she is my best friend," Morag said, pulling her bag over her shoulder. Harry noted the designer logo. Clearly, Morag's black market industries paid well.

"Well?" Arabella asked, looking at Harry. "Are you coming to breakfast with us?" The question hung in the air, weighted with greater significance than the words implied.

Harry paused, examining the girl. Arabella Rossi had Blaise's same calm and dry wit, that same aura of knowing something everyone else didn't. It was appealing. "Yes, I'm coming," Harry said, nodding firmly. "And for the record, I'm just here to prove that I'm as good as anybody else academically. I'm not interested in actually joining the political realm when I graduate."

"Lovely," Arabella said approvingly. "How about home-wrecking? Is that in your future?"

"No," Harry said, shrugging.

"What a shame. Morag, you'll have to break up twice as many marriages to make up for Harry since you're the one insisting we grace her with our presence."

Harry wrinkled her nose. "Why is that Morag's job? Shouldn't you be the one destroying wedded bliss if you enjoy it so much?"

"Who says I haven't already started?" Arabella asked with the faintest smile.

Harry spluttered. "You're fifteen!"

"Oh yes," Arabella said. "And as a marvelously precocious child and genius arithmancer, my parents discovered they had fundamentally different opinions on how to raise me. The custody battle was thrilling." Harry's eyes softened, imagining a young Arabella watching her parents argue. Arabella flicked a hand at Harry dismissively. "Oh, don't pity me. They're each happier apart, and I'm happier with them desperately attempting to buy my affection. It's better for us all. And it was a wonderful start to what I'm sure will be an excellent career in ruining marital bliss."

Harry raised both eyebrows, looking between Arabella and Morag. "You are both fucked up."

Morag raised an eyebrow. "Look in the mirror, darling."

"Yes, I like her," Arabella decided. "We'll keep her."

Harry smirked. "Keep me? You just try to keep up."

Arabella linked arms with Harry, and they arrived at the Great Hall in style.

* * *

Halfway through breakfast, the mail came. Harry's owl swooped down, depositing a pile of letters. Three more followed, dumping more. It wasn't as bad as the Valentines Day Disaster, but it was still more letters than Harry had any interest in reading.

Morag laughed. "Looks like the Daily Prophet article on your dinner time entertainment garnered quite a response. Friends or foes?"

"Both, I think," Harry said, picking up a particularly suspicious, smoking letter from where it had landed in the serving bowl of porridge. She checked it for hexes and, finding one, vanished it. She sorted through them, skimming the ones from people she didn't know first. Harry was apparently a very divisive figure. Two of them included marriage proposals, and those Harry passed over to Arabella for her immediate entertainment. Several others had death threats. Finally, she was down to the letters from people she knew.

She cracked open Caelum's first.

_Brat,_

_I was shocked to learn from the Daily Prophet that you were still alive. I assumed you hadn't written to me yet because Master Snape had killed you once he spent long enough time with you to realize what an idiot you actually are. I'll forgive you this time for not immediately filling me in on what Master Snape is currently working on, but hurry up and write me. Master Whitaker is, as ever, incredibly impressed with his apprentice—that man knows how to recognize gold when he sees it. He's extremely impressed with my modifications to the shaped imbuing process—but not as impressed as you will be when you see how far I have expanded the possibilities of the process beyond what you could have ever imagined. Of course, I'm not sure your small mind will even understand my work, so I'll do my best to explain in small words._

_Seriously, hurry up and tell me about Snape and about your shaped imbuing plans. I'm assuming one of your betters will have you assassinated after that absurd stunt, so you better put quill to paper immediately. Lifting up the entire table? The fact that all that power is wasted on such a tacky halfblood is appalling._

_And purple hair? I know you didn't take me up on my last beautician offer, but I know a hairdresser who will get rid of that color for free just out of pity for everyone at Hogwarts with eyes. I'm aware you are all taken with your new face but don't get a big head, halfblood. Cheekbones don't make up for a complete lack of taste. For a Book of Gold heiress, you are utterly nouveau. It's repulsive. Stay out of the tabloids, brat, or I will no longer be able to rationalize gracing you with my presence._

_And try to keep your misshapen purple head down. You made a lot of people look very foolish. I know of more than one powerful family that is angry on behalf of their heirs. I refuse to allow you to get yourself killed until you have spent a few years scrubbing my cauldrons and floors like a good little assistant, and there are some out there who would have no compunctions about offing you. Write back immediately!_

_Your intellectual and social superior,_

_C. Lestrange_

Harry grinned. Caelum wasn't even trying to hide his affection at this point. That overt concern for her health and wellbeing was shockingly evident. Sometimes Harry felt useless, and then she remembered that she had transformed an unbearable prig into somebody approaching human.

The warning that she had enemies outside Hogwarts wasn't surprising. She had known that would be the case when she showed up at Hogwarts in the first place. Better to prod the enemy out into the open than wait for it to strike. But Harry wanted to know precisely what whispers Caelum had heard. She made a mental note to write back quickly—it would flatter his ego, and he would be more inclined to tell her everything he was hinting at. Not that he ever shut up anyway.

Leo had sent her a letter too in his familiar scrawl, so different from Caelum’s looping, obsessively perfect pureblood handwriting.

_Harry,_

_The kids have been asking after you constantly. Jason said to tell you that his skills have improved and next time you are in the alleys, he’s going to get your purse. I considered telling him to leave you alone, but then I remembered that you love a challenge. Or at least, tolerate challenges, and he needs the practice._

_Speaking of challenges, how are you doing? Are you okay? Are the Hogwarts arseholes treating you too badly? You looked proper badass in that Prophet photo. Rispah offers her compliments on your modifications to the uniform—she says you have “proven yourself a worthy student”. I think she was worried you would embarrass her, so that’s high praise. But let me know if you need me to come up and help you beat up some purebloods. I’d enjoy a vacation. I’m aware you can take care of yourself and are probably rolling your eyes at the audacity of the offer, but you know I’m here if you need me._

_Things are a bit stressful here. The Aurors (your dad) has finally decided to leave us alone, but your enemy is making trouble. I only catch whiffs of him here and there, but he’s recruiting still. Defeating him in the task hasn’t stopped his enthusiasm. Still, don’t worry about us. There haven’t been any more attacks like there were on_ Maywell _, but we’re still on guard. We’re more than a match for that inhuman bastard. These are our streets._

_The Alleys miss you. Take care._

_Leo_

Harry pursed her lips. As unrealistic as it was, she wished Leo could share information with James. The Aurors would be so much more effective if the local knowledge Leo and the others had was at their disposal. For a second, she wondered if she could swear her dad to secrecy and then tell him what she got from Leo—serve as a go-between—but it was unrealistic. The two organizations might have a common enemy, but that didn’t change that the Aurors were supposed to clamp down on any and all crime in Wizarding England. It would be a disaster. The separation from her normal life was one of her favorite things about the alleys. But in this case, that separation was getting in the way of finding Voldemort.

Harry’s hand clenched on the paper. During the attack on Maywell, she’d realized that all the skills she’d attained over the past few years made her legitimately effective against Voldemort. She was tired of danger in a lot of ways, but while her friends and all non-purebloods were unsafe, it irked to be caged at Hogwarts. Harry could be doing something more to find him. But there were adults on the case, experts, Harry reminded herself. And despite everything that happened, she was still just a student. Which honestly felt surreal at this point.

She put the letter away and cracked open the last one, slipping her knife under the haphazardly stamped Potter seal.

_Dearest Harry,_

_While I appreciate that, for once, the recent Daily Prophet headline was not about a murder or a terrorist attack, I was somewhat taken aback to see that it was instead about my daughter. What is going on? Why did you do that? It seemed terribly dangerous—you could have gotten hurt, or you could have hurt somebody else! Even when your feelings are hurt, you shouldn't endanger other people._

_However, your father insists that I compliment you for "giving those slimy snakes what they had coming." I_ admit, _I am glad that you stood up for yourself, and I only have myself to blame for your temper. And your power. I can't even chastise you, although I know you most likely have a million detentions. In your shoes, I would probably have done worse._

_But it was still very unusual. You've never seemed to want attention, and darling, the entire country has been watching you since this summer. Are you unsafe at Hogwarts? The quotes in the article made it sound like you are being threatened. Do you want to come home? Or go to AIM? Please don't feel that you have to stay at Hogwarts if you are unhappy or uncomfortable. All we care about is your happiness. You can leave the politics to the adults! You are very brave, darling, and we are proud of you whatever you decide._

_Be careful, dear. Endless love,_

_Mum, Dad, Addie, Remus, and Sirius_

_P.S. Your father has been complaining about your skirt length and shoes in that photo. I've told him you are definitely within the uniform regulations to shut him up, but you and I both know I lied. What are you wearing? Do you need me to send you a longer skirt? And your boots didn't look very comfortable. What happened to your potions boots? I'm all about self-expression, but are you sure you are wearing what makes you happy? If you are, I won't say another word. But your father will probably rant about 1,000 more._

_PPS. Addy made you a drawing. She didn't exactly make it for you, but she's made about fifteen that look almost exactly identical over the past few weeks, and I haven't the slightest idea what to do with them, so we'll say she made this one just for you. The Potters are not very artistic, but we have other charms. She's blowing you a kiss!_

Harry smiled as she unfolded Addy's art. It was a mess of pencil scribbles, with what looked like a gray stone building—a castle—and someone vaguely person-like and a bunch of dark blue and grey blotches and purple. It was awful, and she loved it. She traced her finger along the lines of crayon.

Her smile slowly tightened into the slightest grimace. Harry knew her parents just wanted the best for her, but sometimes it was apparent that they didn't have a clue what the best was. The idea that she could leave politics to the adults was naïve, childish—indeed, it was what she had believed when she was a child. But politics impacted every part of her life and her future, and Addy's future. If, in the end, they couldn't protect Harry from politics—and they couldn't—what were they going to do for Addy? Harry had Archie for a fake engagement. What were they going to do when Addy was old enough if they hadn't managed to forever eradicate blood supremacy? Risk Riddle getting around his vows somehow?

Harry couldn't trust him not to. She had to be involved.

Despite her mild annoyance, Harry was amused by her parents' attempts to chastise her. Her parents both, despite their concern, enjoyed sticking it to the man. She did not come from a calm or measured family. They knew precisely how hypocritical they were being, and behind the words was almost certainly pride. Harry's lips twitched. Her new performative "Hogwarts harry" was apparently someone they understood and were proud of.

"That's cute," Morag said, jostling Harry out of her thoughts.

Harry looked down at the picture in her hands. "I'm glad you think so. It's going up on the wall next to my bed, so you'll have to look at it." Arabella reached out, and Harry passed the drawing to her.

Arabella examined it closely. "This has a very neo-impressionist energy. Somewhat derivative of that American muggle artist, Twombly—do you know him? You don't? Oh, he was a post-war artist, the same period as Rauschenberg and Jones," Arabella explained, looking at Harry like this was supposed to mean something. Harry shrugged. "After the muggle World War? The second? Or maybe the fourth, I can never keep track of those muggle fiascos. You really don't know him? Cy Twombly? Merlin, for a halfblood, you really do not know your muggles. What's the point of having a non-pureblood friend if they don't even attend the Venice Biennale?"

"Biennale?" Harry repeated, her brows furrowed. She decided not to inquire further. "Do you have any idea how many muggles there are in the world?"

Arabella looked at her flatly. "Too many, probably. But their art is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. So pleasantly still. God, I hate the way the wizarding portraits insist on talking to me while I look at them. How in the Goddess am I supposed to carry out a thorough visual analysis of a piece when its inhabitants are shouting that I'm making them uncomfortable or they just up and leave the painting entirely? Absolute nonsense." She paused, her eyes narrowed as she examined Harry. "You're entirely certain you and Twombly aren't related?"

"Yes," Harry said slowly, "We actually aren't related to every muggle artist whose paintings resemble children's scribbles. My sister is three. She's not old enough to be derivative."

"One is never too young to be derivative," Morag said mournfully. "It's the problem with this world. Nothing new under the sun."

"My little sister is pretty darn new," Harry said, looking at the drawing. She shrugged. "I assume that if my three-year-old sister's drawing reminds you of neo-expressionist art by Twombulby, you are okay with me putting it up in our dorm?"

"Three weeks of rooming with us, and she already thinks she has the right to curate our walls," Morag observed, flicking a page of her magazine.

Arabella sighed. "It's Twombly, you uncultured swine."

Harry interpreted that as unanimous assent.

* * *

After classes, Harry forced herself to sit down and respond to her parents, Caelum, and Leo. Each of her responses had at least four paragraphs, a herculean effort for such a terrible correspondent. But Harry had so few ways to alleviate the guilt of all her lies that she had decided that prompt responsiveness would have to be one of them. Each letter drained only a drop in the ocean of her guilt, but Harry had accepted years ago that guilt was something she would just have to live with—yet another voice in her head to keep Dom company. At least the sheer annoyance of deciding what to say and really trying to think about the readers' feelings made the work seem grueling enough to be some sort of punishment.

It was remarkable how difficult it was to accept her parents' concern—somehow, it had been easier to let them be concerned about her when they were concerned about all the wrong things. Now that they knew enough of the truth to be worried with relative accuracy, comforting them and telling them what they wanted to hear had become infinitely more difficult. The ruse's reveal hadn't convinced Lily and James that Harry was independent and could take care of herself. It had just convinced them that she had absolutely no judgment.

Mind you, all her guilt didn’t alleviate her annoyance about the process of replying to their letter. In a blatant abuse of power, her father had filched a great deal of truth parchment from the DMLE, and insisted that any letter she sent them be written on one of those. Her parents’ attempts at forgiveness didn’t mean they weren’t watching her closely or doing everything in their power to make it impossible for her to lie to them.

The process of attempting to comfort them without a single lie took all of Harry’s skill at evasion. As much as possible, she stuck to facts and minor details—instead of saying she felt completely safe at Hogwarts, she wrote, T _he sunrise over the lake is pretty. The house elves are very kind. I am happy that the potions lab is well-stocked—it has seven jars of newt eyes and two whole drawers of fluxweed. I went for a run yesterday and I feel physically healthy, except that my right toe is sore. I was invited to eat breakfast today with my roommates, who are nice unique. Their names are Morag and Arabella. Dad, I received two marriage proposals by mail. I intend to write back to each and tell them they need your permission first. You should expect their letters soon._ (Just to ensure it was true, she then actually did that. Anything for the joke.)

It was a horrifyingly boring letter, but she was not known for her epistolary skills, and the litany of compliments about basic features of the castle would have to be good enough to satisfy them. She grinned slightly at the paragraph she had dedicated to waxing poetic about the Hogwarts gargoyles. That was going to raise eyebrows at home, but the gargoyles on the columns surrounding the courtyard did have very long claws and teeth. Harry told no lies.

Eventually, Harry finished her last signature and stuffed the letters in her potions bag, swearing to herself as she fumbled with the bag's clasp. She still wasn't quite used to the new bag, and it had been almost a month. Fumbling with it, she got up and headed towards the owlery.

One of the significant downsides of Ravenclaw tower was that it required you to go all the way down to the fourth floor before you could cross the castle to the owlery tower. On the fourth floor, she ducked behind an entirely inappropriate tapestry of a bunch of drugged-out nymphs gyrating in a wood. The treasures of Hogwarts had not been thoroughly selected with students in mind. She made good time, jumping up steps in the dark. Harry didn't need a light, as familiar as she was with the passage. She ran through her forthcoming tasks in her head as she moved.

"Agh," Harry exclaimed, running straight into something warm and body-like. The body shouted and flailed, and Harry instinctively fell back, tumbling down the stairs and landing on her hand. A familiar jarring pain when through her wrist.

"Forge, it's Puppy!" Fred exclaimed, jumping down the stairs to Harry, a light blooming at the end of his wand.

"Golly, Gred, it is!"

"You pushed me," Harry said, wincing. She examined her wrist, frowning, and directed her magic to the new fracture.

"Same wrist you broke before?" George asked.

Harry barely heard him, her attention focused on the break, and she muttered, "Yes."

"Puppy's lost his edge, Gred," George said, tutting. "Giving up the whole big prank just like that."

"Her edge, Forge."

Harry froze. Her gaze slowly lifted from her wrist to the twins, who stared at her with identical grins. George said, "And to think, we spent weeks trying to decide whether to invite you back into our conspiracy. We have a great prank planned, but you've lost the subtlety of a good prankster."

"We'll have to rescind our offer," George said brightly. His grin slightly dropped. "Looks like Puppy can't be trusted."

"Puppy?" Harry asked, her grin brittle. "Why do you keep calling me that?"

Identical raised eyebrows greeted her.

"Too—"

"Little—"

"Too—"

"Late."

Harry paled. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure, you do, Puppy," Fred said, bouncing a little bit on his toes. "A good prankster admits when they've been caught and takes pride in the chaos they created."

"I—"

"I'll admit, we were puzzled for longer than we should have been. We moped around the burrow, exploding one of Percy's left shoes each time our abandonment complex overwhelmed us—"

George dramatically fell against the wall and then slid down to the floor, his arms splayed, and a single perfect tear appearing. "Our Puppy lied to us! Left us and ran away!"

"And then Ginny and Ron made their way into our room--A rare occurrence."

Fred's face dropped. "For some reason, they just don't enjoy our hospitality."

"And Ginny said she'd been thinking."

"A thinking Ginny is always a dangerous one, so we attempted to shove her out of the room—"

"But before we could, she said something very intriguing."

"She said _Harry's a liar too_."

"Now, that didn't mean much at first."

"Unimpressive, we thought."

"But she told us about all the ways the girl named Harry taught her to influence others during their odd few hours wandering the grounds of the quidditch world cup. She reminded us of just how similar Harry and Rigel were—how impossibly similar."

"And we all sat there."

"Ron looking useless."

"In fairness, he can't help that, Gred. It's the way his face was built."

"We had a think."

"We remembered how cool and calm you were at the cup—too cool for someone who had been safe and cozy and playing around in America, or even in the lower alleys. You were cool like you'd seen danger before. You were calm like Rigel."

Fred said, "You weren't even scared—and, I'm unashamed to admit, I was shitting bricks. And Fred was shitting boulders."

"Ginny wouldn't tell us much about what happened in the chambers—almost nothing, but she told us that Rigel was calm and determined when he decided to fight the basilisk and sent her for help. She said you'd reminded her of that at the cup, and she'd ignored it."

"But even then, we weren't convinced."

"Until we looked at it our own way." Harry stared at them, their grins still stuck on, but the slightest wariness in their eyes. They were almost vibrating as they spoke, slipping in and out of sentences and passing words back and forth to each other. George said, "As we see it, Sirius Black and James Potter's heirs didn't pull off a lie, or a ruse, or whatever the newspapers are calling it. They pulled off one absolutely world-changing massive prank. It made its victims—"

"—Riddle Piddle and Malodorousfoy and their minions—"

"—look absurd, the way any good prank would."

"And it shocked everyone else. Like any good prank, nobody saw it coming. That kind of boldness is rare. It comes with birth, and it comes with a childhood of chaos."

"And here's the thing—there aren't that many good pranksters in the world. Because the world isn't built to be pranked, and society tries to grind the little baby prankster down. But there is the rare parent out there that doesn't attempt to destroy their child's lawlessness."

"Parents like ours, as much as they squawk at us," Fred said. "And parents like the Marauders. The Marauder heirs pulling off something like this? Having the will and the belief and the boldness? It makes sense. They were born to it. Finding some random European third person with the nerve and the skillset? Unlikely."

"That's a rather cynical view of pranking," Harry said. "It could be an innate trait independent of nurture."

"It could. But there's a question of scale." Fred's eyes were almost dreamy. "And the scale of this? Incredible."

"So hypothetically, if you were correct," Harry said delicately, trying to calm the panic that was sweeping through her, "What would you do about it?"

"We would collect our winnings from Ron," Fred said. "He of little faith in our brilliant analysis of the situation."

"You can't tell more people!" Harry interjected. "…Hypothetically."

"We're Weasleys," Fred said, eyeing her narrowly. "We are a clan. Unbreakable. Indivisible. Pure in our love and trust for each other."

"None of your siblings trust you," Harry pointed out.

"And we cry ourselves to sleep over it every night," George said, sighing. He was still sprawled on the stone, and he made a valiant effort to swoon even further. It didn't work. "But Ginny and Ron are in the middle of this too. And you know it."

Harry sagged against the wall, running her uninjured hand through her hair and tugging on a lock of hair. There didn't seem to be any point in protesting. They knew. And short of obliviating the twins and then hunting down Ron and Ginny and obliviating them as well, there was nothing she could do about it. She briefly considered that but dismissed it reluctantly as both immoral and, far more importantly, unfeasible. The only option left was to give Fred and George the full truth and trust them. The twins knew enough that no lie she made would make sense to them. Harry bit her lip. Tuesday’s Witch Weekly advice column insisting on the importance of trust between friends was clearly not written with sixteen-year-old felons in mind. Trust was awful.

"Puppy, _we know_ ," Fred said, exasperation creeping into his voice.

Harry's lips pressed together, turning white. After a long moment, she said firmly, "If you guys or Ron or Ginny tell anybody, I'll go to Azkaban. Do you realize that? It's not a prank. It's not a joke. I broke the law."

"It's not a joke," George agreed, his ever-present grin missing in action.

Fred, equally serious, followed with, "But it is a prank. Because eventually, everything is going to turn out okay, and we are all going to laugh at it." Harry snorted. "No, really. It was mischief—"

"Big mischief," Fred interjected.

"—for a good cause. And when you defeat blood prejudice alongside your trusty coterie of Light-aligned Weasleys, all the muggleborns and halfbloods will get to do whatever the hell they want and make all the trouble they desire wherever they desire. They're going to cheer and laugh with sheer joy."

"We-- the good guys, obviously-- won't be able to stop laughing. And that's a prank for the history books."

Harry looked down at her lap, trying to hide the faintest softening in her eyes. Were her lips quivering? What are all these emotions, she thought, almost hissing internally.

 _Friendship, kid. That's called friendship_ , Dom said, the words floating up. _We can use that_.

 _I'm done using friendship to further my goals_ , Harry responded. But he was right. This was what friendship was, and apparently, they still wanted to be her friends. "But aren't you angry with me?" she asked. "For lying?"

"We were furious, but only because we were on the outside."

George nodded. "Once we figured out what you did and how you did it, once we got the prank, we understood. And we've had months to process and get used to the idea."

"But we aren't used to your new face," Fred huffed, shaking his head. "Freaky."

"What, my overwhelming sensuality?" Harry asked, smirking up at them.

George lightly smacked the back of her head while Fred mimed gagging. "Your girlishness," Fred said. "It's just odd. Rigel looking like…that."

"Rigel doesn't exist."

"Nah," Fred said. "Rigel is still in there. You didn't lose your past or your character along with your new face. You just get to make more room for your future."

"Gred, that was either wise or nonsensical," Fred said, gaping. He flopped on top of George and shaking him. "Are you ill? Are you dying? Did you say your last words to Puppy instead of me?"

Harry watched them start to wrestle, bumping down the staircase as they roughhoused. She cataloged all the bruises she would imminently be expected to heal. Harry smiled just the tiniest bit. She had friends to heal—and it would be a long process, but there was time. And with any luck (not that Rigel had ever had much luck), there were many late nights kidnapping Mrs. Norris's cat or even pranking Riddle in their future. "Are you done?" she called down through the tunnel's darkness as the scuffling receded into groans.

"Help us out, Rigel—"

"Harry," Harry corrected emphatically. "Remember? You mustn't ever forget. Don't I sound different to you, anyway?"

"Urgh, right," Fred muttered. "You sound different, but you feel the same."

"You mean my aura? It's different," Harry said, taking a second to check after a flash of panic.

"Nah, your vibe," George said. "Now that we know…we know. If we'd been looking at it earlier, we probably would have known then. Rigel, or Archie, I guess, seemed a bit odd when you two visited us over Christmas. But we were up to some serious experimentation, and your cousin was appropriately impressed, so we weren't really paying attention. And you were there too, so your vibes were floating around."

Harry shook her head. Whatever weird magical senses were floating around the Weasleys were confusing and slightly terrifying. "You know me by my…vibe?" she confirmed.

"You're Puppy," Fred said as if it were obvious. "Now c'mon, heal my bruises. We have to go see Ginny and Ron, and Ginny will only give us more."

"Why?" Harry asked, pulling out her wand and moving down the stairs to where they had ended up. "Have you pissed her off recently? Or will she be upset you confronted me without her?"

"Eh, maybe," George said. "Or maybe she's just absolutely mental. The older she gets, the more she turns into Mum."

"Don't tell her we said that," George hastened to add. "But Weasley witches are bloody terrifying."

Harry grinned. "I can handle her."

"She's still going to give you shit about lying."

Harry tilted her head thoughtfully. "I'm not sure she will. As you said, she already knows I'm a liar."

Fred huffed. "Potter witches are terrifying too," he said. He squared his chest, "But we're Gryffindors, and you're our lil pup, and Godric's heirs are unafraid."

Harry smirked at them. "Hmm, seems like maybe I'll need to cook something up to instill the proper respect for my devious and cutthroat nature."

George eyed her. "Bring it on," he said, reaching out and fondly ruffling her hair. Fred jumped in and joined, both of them squealing enthusiastically about how fun it was to pet Puppy's new mane, thoroughly patting and twisting and messing it up.

Harry let them do it for far too long. She owed it to them to accept the affection they wanted to give. Then she pushed them off and insisted they let her work. Fred held up his wand to bring the light closer to her face. He pointed at a red mark on his elbow. She set about healing it, and then, as she glanced up, froze. He was staring at her hair, a wide grin stretched across his face. Harry slowly glanced at George, who was nodding approvingly.

"Worked even better than we thought, Gred," he said, rubbing his hands together and then hastily rubbing his hands on a handkerchief he pulled out of nowhere.

Harry swore, snatching the only mirror she had out of her bag. "What did you do, you monsters?" she exclaimed, staring at her now bald head. Harry reached up, frantically patting her hair, and then froze. She could feel the hair as if it were there, but in the mirror, it looked like she was patting air. Her head was a bald egg underneath her now invisible locks. "I look absurd!"

Archie surfaced in the mirror, and she hastily tried to wave him to be quiet. He usually wasn't right near the mirror, but she should have put it back in her back before speaking. She chided herself for the carelessness. Before she could say anything, Archie collapsed laughing. "What did you do to yourself, cuz?"

"That's wicked," Fred and George said in unison, peering over her shoulder into the mirror. Fred's eyes were wide as he examined the mirror calculatingly, clearly already determined to figure out how to replicate it.

"So Harry's newfound baldness was you two," Archie said, nodding approvingly. "Excellent work. But will she ever get her hair back?"

"I don't know if she needs it back," George said. "She does have a well-shaped skull."

"A bold look for sure," Archie agreed, his lips twitching. "She looks ever so happy with her new image. My compliments to the stylists." Harry glared at him. "Oops," Archie said. "So um, maybe don't mention the magic mirror thing around? It's pretty handy for us to have in our pockets. Literally and figuratively."

"This is how you did all your plotting when she was pretending to be you here at Hogwarts," Fred said, his eyes narrowed. "It sort of feels like cheating."

"She wasn't being me," Archie exclaimed frantically. "Harry was in the Lower Alleys." His mouth gaped open like a fish, and he insisted, "She was busy participating in the capitalist system as a corporate potioneer in the heart of Dickensian urban London. Harry claims she was 'too busy' being a cog in the machine of oppression to stand alongside honest working people and seize the reigns of production. So she was definitely far too busy to be at Hogwarts."

"The Weasleys figured out the truth," Harry told him, glaring at the twins. "And for the record, I stood alongside plenty of working people. They just weren't honest." Archie's follow-up questions tumbled through the mirror, but she ignored him. She turned to Fred and George and asked, "Seriously, when does this wash off? I can't be walking along the corridors like this. It would ruin my aura of invincibility."

"Eh," Fred said, scratching his head. "That's actually an excellent question."

"You have a gift for asking the tough ones," George agreed. Harry's hands tightened on her wand, and Fred put his hands up defensively. "Just enough time for you to hide away with us and help us plan our next big prank."

Harry glared at them for a second longer and then patted her hair again, making sure it was still there. "Fine. But my revenge will come. It will come like a ghost in the night, appearing when you least expect it, appearing when you feel safe." She poked Fred and then George in the chest with her wand, staring them down. "When you are warm, when you are happy, that's when my revenge will come. And you will be sorry."

Fred snatched the mirror out of her hand. He asked Archie, "Was she always like this?"

"Worse," Archie said fervently.

"You three do not need to be friends," Harry announced, grabbing the mirror away and stuffing it in her potions bag without even a goodbye. "The world couldn't survive it."

George threw an arm around her shoulder. "The world can't survive you, Puppy."

Fred threw his arm over from the other side. "Now that the gang's back together, the world should be afraid."

Harry let the smile she'd been suppressing emerge. It would take her a long time to get used to the idea of them knowing the truth, but the Weasleys would be excellent allies. And they had always been wonderful friends. She nodded and said, "Very, very afraid."

* * *

It was many hours before she completed her trip to the owlery, her hair finally visible (and flawless) and her mind buzzing. The twins were, as ever, brilliant. Harry, caught up in their machinations, barely made it back before curfew. She went right up to bed, having skipped dinner entirely. It was just as well. She wasn't hungry, and after her encounter with the Weasleys, she wasn't in the mood to have Professor Snape eyeing her from the teacher's table. Just because she had managed to fool him didn't mean she had alleviated his suspicions.

But when Harry showed up to their next session two days later, his face was set in his usual frown, no more than the familiar furrow in his brow. He looked more like his pre-reveal self than she had seen him yet. She paused in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, instinctively examining the corners of the room and taking stock.

Professor Snape barely looked at her. "Are you going to lurk there all day, Miss Potter?"

"Sorry, Professor."

"Protective gear is on the wall, Miss Potter," Snape rapped out. "And you will follow me to the other lab."

Harry's eyes widened. "Sir?"

"You will need protective gear to free brew," Snape said, one eyebrow raised. "Or do you think you are fireproof?"

"You're letting me free brew? What happened to all the reviewing and testing of my skills? It's just…done? But I haven't demonstrated--"

"I've decided to take you at your word, Miss Potter. Is that not what you wished? I will assume that you have the skills you told me you had—I will assume that Rigel sufficiently passed on my teachings and that you, Miss Potter, know exactly what he knows. I spend enough time watching talentless fifth years bumble around a cauldron. I don't need to watch you follow a set of directions to know you can read."

"Yes, Sir," Harry said, eagerly pulling out the heavy-duty apron. Her smile dropped off as she started to don it. She would have to suppress her skills and mess up the first few times so she didn't seem like Rigel. It was just like throwing a game of cards at the Dancing Phoenix, except with a far more wily supervisor.

An hour later, a sweat-drenched Harry just barely kept herself from flooding her potion with magic, stepping back at the last second to let the cauldron explode. She winced as bits of pewter collided with the domed shield that had snapped up around the potion. Harry wrinkled her nose at the smell and then glanced at Professor Snape, adopting a sheepish expression. "I'm sorry, Professor, I—"

"Next time, put the potion into stasis before the explosion," Professor Snape said, his lip curled. "You have put a great deal of work into affirming your excellence. I have no interest in watching you fail."

"But it's hard—" Harry started.

Professor Snape snorted. "You can do better than that."

"You don't know that," Harry said mulishly. "You've never seen me free brew."

If it was possible, Professor Snape's lip curled even more. It was fascinating, and Harry made a note to practice the expression in the mirror later. She wasn't sure why she had never put any work into adopting Professor Snape's facial expressions. His disdainful glances and glares were uncharted territory in dire need of exploration, and Harry was nothing if not ambitious to learn everything he could teach her.

He snapped, "I do know that." After a pause, he added, "If you have been free brewing alone in some Diagon back alley with no proper protections and not died yet or set a house on fire, then I know you can do better than that."

Harry smiled at him tremulously, rubbing her hands together with determination. "I'll do my best, Professor."

"Get out," Professor Snape said, rubbing at his temple as if the entire world had just landed on his head, and he couldn't push it off. "I can't take any more of…" he waved his hand abstractly. "This."

Harry smiled brightly. "But I liked when the potion went boom. Wasn't that fun? Ever so festive."

"Next session, no exploding cauldrons, or I swear to you, you will be in detention for weeks."

Harry nodded, a smirk dancing around her mouth. "I see you prefer the stick to the carrot."

"I prefer an iron stirring rod. Better for beating an unruly apprentice."

"Oh, dear," Harry said. She swung her bag over her shoulder and shot a bright grin at him. "That sounds like my queue to leave."

She made for the door with all appropriate haste, unaware of the slight smile that slipped surreptitiously onto Professor Snape's face. He glanced at the mess on the floor, and the smile dropped.

* * *

"Merlin," Morag shrieked, jumping back. "Arabella, Harry is having a stroke!"

Harry winced and dropped the expression. She turned back to the mirror with the barely suppressed frustration. Her lip curl had been just the slightest bit off, and she'd been going at it for an hour. Harry rubbed her sore mouth abstractly. These expressions were really exhausting to the facial muscles. "Sorry," Harry said, glancing at Morag. Morag was standing in the door to the dormitory, clasping at her heart, with Arabella peeking over her shoulder. Harry muttered, "I was just…practicing."

"Practicing what? Ghoulism?"

"She rather looked like Professor Snape just then," Arabella observed, gazing at Harry with the patented Zabini calm interest. "Did you see that? Magnificently disdainful."

Harry grinned, almost jumping with excitement. A slightly frenzied look crossed her face. "I looked like Professor Snape? You mean that? I really did? Brilliant!"

Morag clutched the doorframe, shuddering. "There is something deeply, alarmingly wrong with you, Potter. I shudder to think where you'll end up."

Arabella patted Morag comfortingly. "At least we will have front row seats to the show."

"Maybe it won't be a show?" Harry responded hopefully. "Maybe I'll have a peaceful and uneventful life going forward."

Two piercing laughs burst out of the fifth-year dormitory. The giggles spiraled down into the Ravenclaw dorm, where they disturbed a desperate NEWT study group. A frazzled seventh-year stood up, murder in her eyes, and the curtain almost closed on the Harriett Potter Show far too early. But just before the overly-caffeinated student was out of range, a teary friend grabbed her robes and begged her for help on question six. The seventh-year, an ardent follower of the Ravenclaw Chivalric Code, knew her sacred duty and returned to her seat; the giggles were forgotten as she prepared to go into knightly battle against a most knavish arithmancy equation. Above her, the giggles continued as Harry made faces at the mirror.

With the fervent determination of a medieval page seeking to master the language of the sword, Harry worked long into the morning. The sun rose on a newly-christened Master of the Sneer, ready for another day at Hogwarts. She was going to need that sneer and every weapon she had tucked away in her new potions bag. Harriett Potter's wall of lies was slowly, brick by brick, falling to pieces around her. And Azkaban waited on the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spent a while going back and forth on the interaction with a specific character because of ~new developments~, but I decided to leave it as I had originally drafted this chapter. Fans of said character can rest easy in this fic!
> 
> In my excitement about FF14, I've left all my schoolwork on the wayside, and my thesis is in dire need of attention, so I won't be able to update as often! But don't worry-- there will be more! I haven't had time to respond to all the reviews, but I read them all and they make me so happy. Thank you so much for continuing to read this and I hope you enjoyed chapter 3!


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